Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) said it would buy Oriental Trading Co, a toy and party supplies company that is partially owned by private equity firm KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR), for an undisclosed sum. The deal may be the last for a while for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company, whose merchandise ranges from pink flamingos and wedding favors to Halloween decorations and beading supplies, after it was passed around by private equity firms over the past few years.
Finance Pros Keep Trying To Get Inside Warren Buffett’s Head (WSJ)
Is it possible to copy Warren Buffett’s investment strategy and package it in a mutual fund? The folks at AQR Capital Management LLC, a firm that runs 16 mutual funds, recently published a paper saying they had created a systematic process that picks stocks like Warren Buffett. The paper says that the process outperformed the returns of Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRKB -0.54% (with the benefit of hindsight) from 1976 to 2011. The Greenwich, Conn., firm declined to comment on whether it plans to roll out a mutual fund based on its Buffett simulator.
Washington Post’s Shares Gain After TV Units Boost Profit (BusinessWeek)
The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO), the media company partly owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, gained the most in almost six months after broadcast and cable television divisions fueled third-quarter profit growth. The shares rose 5.4 percent to $357.80 at 10:20 a.m. in New York, the biggest intraday gain since May. The stock had declined 9.9 percent this year through yesterday.
Warren Buffett Praises LeBron James’ Business Sense (SlamOnLine)
The odd couple: LeBron James counts Warren Buffett as one of his buddies. And according to the billionaire investor, LBJ is a top-notch businessman. From the Miami Herald: “As focused as James has been on his goal of winning NBA championships, he’s just as driven off the court about building a business empire and breaking the billion-dollar mark, an accomplishment golfer Tiger Woods was the first athlete to achieve. ‘You have to get to know him,’ Buffett said. ‘LeBron’s not initially really talkative. He’s savvy. He’s smart about financial matters. It’s amazing to me the maturity he exhibits. I know that if I had been famous at that age, I would have had trouble keeping my feet on the ground.’ Those are pretty big compliments coming from Buffett, the world’s leading investment guru, who at 82 could easily be the grandfather of James, 27…
Berkshire Hathaway Announces Earnings Today — Here’s What To Expect (BusinessInsider)
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is poised to report its biggest year-over-year increase in book value per share since 2010 on gains from investments, operating-business earnings and Chairman Warren Buffett’s equity-derivative bets. Book value, a measure of assets minus liabilities, may have climbed 15 percent to $111,546 per share on Sept. 30 from a year earlier, according to Jay Gelb, an analyst at Barclays Plc. Cliff Gallant of KBW Inc. estimated $110,701 at the end of the third quarter. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire is scheduled to report earnings after the market closes tomorrow.
The art of the deal: Lessons from Warren Buffett (CBSNews)
Warren Buffett looks at many, many deals. Some of them he likes and pursues. When he finds one he loves, he moves fast. For several years, one of Warren’s managers, Nebraska Furniture mart’s Irv Blumkin, had been telling him about a furniture-retailing giant in Utah, RC Willey. Blumkin had also told Bill Child, CEO of RC Willey, how pleased the Blumkin family had been with its relationship with Warren.
Warren Buffett gobbles up more Wells Fargo shares (BizJournals)
Guess which stock Warren Buffett was picking up last month? That’s right. Wells Fargo. “In the last week, I bought some Wells Fargo,” Buffett told CNBC on Oct. 24. “We only have some 430 million shares. I didn’t feel we had enough.” Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has long been the San Francisco bank’s largest shareholder. Berkshire’s fourth-quarter SEC filings will show just how enthusiastically he was picking up shares when the company discloses its Wells stake.
Lotos stocks soar as Warren Buffett announces deal (WBJ)
The stock price of Polish state-owned oil refiner Grupa Lotos soared earlier this week as Warren Buffett announced that CalEnergy would explore gas deposits along with Lotos Petrobaltic in the Baltic Sea. CalEnergy belongs to Berkshire Hathaway, Mr Buffet’s company, while Lotos Petrobaltic is a subsidiary of Grupa Lotos. “We will start drilling next year. This will allow us to make a decision about definitive plans concerning the extraction from this deposit,” said Pawel Olechnowicz, Lotos’s president. Analysts are positive about CalEnergy’s involvement with Lotos.
GATES PHILANTHROPY ERA (Xperedon)
Bruce Rodgers was a key player in the Forbes Next-Generation Philanthropy: Changing the World – Study, co-authored by Credit Suisse, that revealed powerful insights into what is effectively a new era of global philanthropy, in which supremely wealthy and successful business leaders are committing to giving their entire fortunes away to charity, in their lifetimes. …This landmark event in New York involved 161 either near billionaires or billionaires, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who gathered together not to discuss how to make more money, but simply how they could use their wealth and skills in order to change the world, and make it a better place.
