Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company of multiple businesses, including GEICO and Weaving Fruits. It is managed by Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett. In the early twenty-first century, it was one of the largest corporations measured by revenue in the United States. The company was also notable for the high value of its stock (over, 250,000 per share for 2017) and the small size of its headquarters staff (about 25). The company is fully owned by GEICO, Dursell, Dairy Queen, BNSF, Lubrizol, Weaver’s Falls, Helzburg Diamond, Long & Foster, FlightSafe International, Pampered Chef, Forest River, and Net Jets, and has pilot Flight J; And significant minority holdings in government companies are Craft Heinz Company (26.7%), American Express (17.6%), Wells Fargo (9.9%), Coca-Cola Company (9.32%), Bank of America (11.5%), Apple (5.4)%), and Barric Gold. Berkshire Hathaway has achieved annual growth in book value to its shareholders since 1965 (compared to the S&P 500 to 9.7% with dividends for the same period) while employing large amounts of capital and minimal employment. Berkshire Hathaway oversaw its textile operations in 1985, during which time it became well-established as a holding company for Buffett’s other investments and corporate acquisitions.
The company is known for its control and leadership by Warren Buffett, who has served as chairman and chief executive, and by Charlie Munger, one of the company’s vice-chairmen. From the first days of his tenure, insurance companies formed a large part of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Both the National Indemnity Company and the National Fire and Marine Insurance Company (now part of the National Compensation) were purchased in 1967, followed by GEICO in 1996 and General Reinsurance in 1999. To lift the expected return, Buffett has repeatedly created multiple stock portfolios in favor of faithful investments that will be overweight. Over time, Buffett’s investment skills became so well-known that Berkshire’s annual shareholder meetings are now a mecca of value investment proponents and the focus of intense media investigation. Berkshire now owns a variety of businesses, including confectionery, retail, railroad, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaner manufacturers, jewelry sales, uniform production and distribution, and various regional electric and gas utilities. Early in his Berkshire career, Buffett focused on long-term investments in publicly traded firms, but more recently, he bought the entire firm. However, the acquisition of the company has always been sufficiently diversified, for example, by the Scott Fazer Company (1986), the owner of the reference and the educational publisher World Book; Benjamin Moore, maker of paints (2000); And Loom Fruit (2002) by the manufacturer of Underclothing.
In 2010, Buffett announced that he would be succeeded by a team at Berkshire Hathaway a team consisting of a CEO and two to four investment managers. It was announced in 2011 that hedge fund directors Todd Combs and Ted Western would be the two directors. This is because its Class shares have never been divided, and Buffett stated in a 1984 letter to shareholders that he did not intend to divide the shares.
