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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) on Tuesday said it will receive a $5 billion investment from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N), a vote of confidence for the Wall Street bank from perhaps the world's best-known investor. Berkshire will buy $5 billion of perpetual preferred stock that carries a 10 percent dividend. It also will receive warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock at $115 per share, exercisable within five years. Goldman also said it plans to sell at least $2.5 billion of common stock. It announced the offerings after earlier this week announcing...

March 28, 2005 .....investigators on three continents are examining Buffet's Berkshire insurance affiliates .......the company is in the unfamiliar position of having to defend its integrity. Berkshire insurance affiliates are involved in what investigators describe as possible financial manipulation at insurance giants like AIG and Zurich Financial Services Group. Investigators are trying to determine the extent of senior executives who oversaw insurance operations that sold products at the core of international regulatory scrutiny. The broad investigation into the insurance industry has already brought down top executives including Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of AIG.........regulators are looking at a...

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is reaching into its deep pockets to give a steadying hand to Constellation Energy Group Inc. and, at the same time, grab a bargain. Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. said Thursday it will buy Baltimore-based Constellation for $4.7 billion and give it an immediate $1 billion infusion after shares of the nation's largest wholesale power seller plummeted and liquidity concerns had analysts worried it would go out of business. "Obviously we're in unprecedented times," MidAmerican President and CEO Gregory Abel said. "Liquidity and solvency issues are a top priority for many companies. We don't have...

Buffett's Insurance Bust Ruthie Ackerman, 02.29.08, 9:30 PM ET All good things must come to an end -- even billionaire investor Warren Buffett's success in the insurance business. On Friday in Buffett's eagerly awaited annual letter to shareholders, he acknowledged 2007 was a good year, thanks to Berkshire Hathaway's stable insurance operations in a disaster-free 12 months, but he's not expecting a repeat. "That party is over,” he wrote. “It is a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise.” He predicted that even with another catastrophe-free year, the...

When Warren Buffett so much as scratches his nose, the investment world sits up and takes notice. So the Buffettologists will be all over the latest acquisition by the world’s smartest investor. While his rivals were still digesting their sprouts, Mr Buffett announced on the evening of Christmas Day that Berkshire Hathaway was paying $4.5 billion (£2.25 billion) for majority control of Marmon Holdings, an industrial conglomerate owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago. Outside his insurance company investments, this is Mr Buffett’s biggest deal yet. Given Berkshire’s investment preferences, there were few surprises in the deal. Marmon’s products are...

Mutual funds that have been longtime Berkshire Hathaway investors are decamping. Warren Buffett draws as many gee-whiz headlines as ever these days. But the Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA) mystique may be wearing thin among longtime devotees who know the company best--several solid mutual funds that have held its stock for ages. One is the sterling Sequoia Fund, bound in a tight relationship with Buffett for four decades. Since the start of 2005 Sequoia has unloaded $650 million of Berkshire shares, shrinking their weight in Sequoia's portfolio from 35% to 26%. Wallace Weitz shares a hometown with Buffett and runs Weitz...

Billionaire Warren Buffett's holding company bought nearly 2.8 million shares of Dow Jones & Co. earlier this year before Rupert Murdoch sealed his deal to buy The Wall Street Journal's publisher. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed its quarterly summary of its $61.1 billion portfolio of US stocks with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. The filing did not state how much Berkshire paid for the Dow Jones shares. Berkshire bought the Dow Jones shares sometime in April, May or June, so it could have paid as little as $34 a share. Berkshire held 2.78 million shares of Dow Jones...

Help is not on the way to Darfur, Berkshire shareholders say. NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Here's hoping that Warren Buffett isn't with us as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for much longer, or at least that he has a change of heart. The world will be better off. Nearly a year after Buffett pledged to give $37 billion of his personal wealth to charity, the 76-year-old and his shareholder flock at Berkshire (BRKA109,150.00, -25.00, 0.0%) shot down a series of do-gooder proposals that would have required the company to spare some profits in the name of social responsibility, and...

Mr. Buffett also defended his charitable contribution to organizations that support women's reproductive rights, such as Planned Parenthood. "Men set the rules for a lot of years, and I think it's wonderful that women can make reproductive choices," Mr. Buffett replied, as shareholders applauded and cheered. "I think it's a terrific organization," Mr. Buffett added, referring to Planned Parenthood. "I really think it's too bad that for millenia, women not only in the U.S. but all over the world, have had involuntary bearing of babies."

Excerpt - SEATTLE - Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man, is starting this year to give much of his wealth to charity, with the bulk of over $40 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a letter dated Monday, Buffett, who is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., tells Bill and Melinda Gates that the first annual donation would go to the foundation this year. It's expected to total about $1.5 billion. Up until now, all the money given away by the Gates Foundation has come from Bill and Melinda Gates. The money...

A leading U.S. consumer group Monday accused Geico Corp. of using consumers' education backgrounds and occupations as criteria in setting auto insurance rates, resulting in discrimination against minorities and lower-income people. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) charged that the No. 4 U.S. auto insurer, has adopted rating methods and underwriting guidelines in 44 states that directly tie rates to education and occupation. Geico, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK), the insurance and investment company controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett, rejected the charges. It called them "an offensive attempt to link fundamentally fair and actuarially sound industry practices with...

In his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett acknowledged that his bet against U.S. currency had collectively cost them almost $1 billion. Buffet wrote, "My views on America’s long-term problem in respect to trade imbalances, which I have laid out in previous reports, remain unchanged. My conviction, however, cost Berkshire $955 million pre-tax in 2005. ..." In recent years, Buffett has increasingly used his platform as an extraordinarily skillful mutual fund manger to criticize the economic performance of the country under President Bush. In last year's letter he announced that he had been significantly increasing his...

Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in America, is $1.8 billion poorer this year due to bad bets - also losing billions for his loyal following......considered by some as the world's greatest investor, has suffered an embarrassing 2.36 percent loss in returns on his huge Berkshire Hathaway empire in the past year. The pricey shares skidded from their peak last December of $91,200 apiece to $87,490 yesterday.....a drop of nearly $4.7 billion in just three months for his shareholders. Berkshire Hathaway - built largely on insurance businesses and blue chip stocks - got hurt from insurance losses and bad bets on...

New York, Nov. 5 (Reuters): Warren Buffett-run Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Friday posted a 48 per cent decline in quarterly profit — to the lowest level since 2001, hurt by nearly $3 billion of losses from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The company also reduced its stake in foreign currency contracts to $16.5 billion on September 30 from $21.5 billion three months earlier. Buffett has bet against the dollar since 2002 amid concern that high US trade and budget deficits might cause non-US investors to pull money from the country. Third-quarter net income for Berkshire, whose largest business is insurance, fell...

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is expected to testify in the trial of his investment firm's lawsuit accusing the Internal Revenue Service of denying it $16.3 million in tax deductions. The trial began Monday in U.S. District Court after some three years of legal wrangling between Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and the IRS. The lawsuit alleges the IRS made an "erroneous, wrongful and illegal" interpretation of the U.S. Tax Code when it denied the deductions.The IRS disallowed the deductions after tracing $750 million in borrowed money to purchase stocks in several companies, including Coca-Cola Co., Time-Warner and Wells Fargo & Co., according...

Bill Gates Buys 100 Berkshire Hathaway Class A Shrs DOW JONES NEWSWIRES September 16, 2005 6:07 p.m.

Six months ago, the value of the U.S. dollar was on the firing line as it plunged to a record low vs. the euro. Amid fears that a united Europe would surmount the spendthrift United States as a safe haven for financial assets in a tumultuous world, investors worldwide -- led by noted Nebraska sourpuss Warren Buffett -- heaped scorn on our currency and scolded U.S. lawmakers to get the federal deficit under control. But a funny thing happened to all those dollar bears. Their contempt for U.S. economic freedoms hasn’t amounted to a hill of bill of beans, and...

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/pulseone.asp?siteid=mktw&guid={064C1C55-5EA9-4481-9D20-8E9F19AB420B}&dist=bnb 11:46am 06/06/05 General Re exec pleads guilty in AIG -transaction - WSJ (BRK.B, BRK.A) By Carolyn Pritchard SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- An executive at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s (BRK.B) (BRK.A) General Re unit has pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal conspiracy in relation to the company's transaction with American International Group Inc. (AIG) , the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Monday, citing two unnamed people familiar with the matter. John Houldsworth, who headed up General Re's reinsurance unit in Dublin, reportedly faces up to five years in prison for his role in a 2001 transaction between...

OMAHA, Neb. (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A - News; NYSE:BRK-B - News) lost $310 million in the first quarter from betting against the U.S. dollar, but has nevertheless maintained its roughly $21 billion stake against the greenback, the billionaire said on Saturday. ... Omaha-based Berkshire's stake in foreign currency contracts total "a little more than $21 billion," compared with $21.4 billion spread among 12 currencies at year end, Buffett said. That bet backfired in the first quarter, and even now it costs about 5 percent fewer dollars to buy euros than on Dec. 31. Berkshire's currency bets...

Berkshire reinsurance deals queried Agreements helped Gerling Global Re manipulate resultsBy Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last Update: 12:22 PM ET April 26, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Berkshire Hathaway, embroiled in widening investigations into so-called finite reinsurance, courted controversy surrounding the products at least a decade ago, according to reports by state regulators. Finite transactions between some of Berkshire's (BRKA: news, chart, profile) (BRKB: news, chart, profile) main insurance units and a top reinsurer helped that company distort its financial statements, according to a New York Insurance Department examination report written in September 1999. The report was about Gerling Global Re,...