bt1

Thanks much for clarifying.

Hi @gfp Thanks for sharing this document. Wanted to understand the numbers you mention in your post. The section ‘Capital Contribution to subsidiaries’ mentions 517m you have given above. I also see that Note 25 mentions ‘unfavorable prior year development totaling 462 million on business assumed from affliated GUARD insurance companies’. Is this what you round off to about 500m in your post. Or are there additional negative developments elsewhere in this that I missed.

@Brett look forward to reading your book. Would you mind sharing how you got hold of old time annual reports (like Hochschild Kohn, for e.g. Many years ago I stumbled on a website that used to host old time annual reports but since then I lost my bookmark of it and have not been able to find a good alternate, hence this question)

@schin As jouni1 pointed out above lots of books are available for borrowing. For e.g I found 1934 edition of security analysis by Benjamin Graham is available here https://archive.org/details/securityanalysis0000grah

If you folks did not know this already, Normally out of copyright books(old biographies and such) are also sometimes available in archive.org. You can checkout books for an hour and renew more as you need it(as long as it is available). For e.g. I see this https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofa0000carn_b0m4/page/n10/mode/1up

Thanks much for the explanation @gfp

In this annual letter Buffett had written "Japanese companies calculate outstanding shares in a manner different from the practice in the U.S". Does any one know what is different in the way Japanese companies calculate outstanding share? (Apologies if this was discussed in another thread and I missed that, would be thankful if any points that out so I can search for the same.)

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-trims-its-massive-stake-in-apple-1d577d8a?mod=hp_lead_pos2 "Berkshire sold about 1% of its Apple shares in the final three months of 2023, leaving it with a 5.9% stake in the iPhone maker worth about $167 billion on Wednesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data"

Thanks longterminvestor, gfp and John Hjorth. I have been unsuccessful thus far in my google searches to locate this, but will continue to search. On Japanese company handbook - schin, Mohnish claimed in one of Chai with Pabrai episodes to have seen one in Buffett's office

I forget the source(possibly CNBC interview) but I vaguely recall Buffett mentioned Korean company handbook by Citi(?) that he had looked at before he bought a few Korean securities(I believe it was for his personal account as these were small in size for BH) , does any one know if this is something that is updated annually and available. Would appreciate if anyone has looked into this and could share their thoughts.

Thanks Cevian, had read that book. I was checking to see if personal notes made by someone in prior years were available.

Hi, Does anyone know if 1993 and prior Berkshire Hathaway shareholders Meeting transcripts or notes are available . Thanks in advance.

In slide ‘BHE GT&S Acquisition Overview ‘, it is stated “BHE financed the acquisition with 4.0% perpetual preferred stock issued to certain subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for $3.75 billion, ” Would anyone know if this is a common tax advantageous move or something more…

All, I wrote a book on Berkshire Hathaway:”Berkshire Hathaway an opinionated analysis” It is available in two editions:Kindle and paperback https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P8W8ZXP https://www.amazon.com/dp/1798156970 Bitten by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger bug, over the past decade, I became a value investor, investing my own capital.I have spent a substantial amount of my time during the past decade first studying about and then trying to analyze Berkshire Hathaway.This book presents the thought framework I arrived at for analysis. Hope is that will stand the test of time in that the principles of framework will also allow for extensibility. This book provides a qualitative treatment and not a quantitative one. In fact it eschews discussion of numbers and individual businesses(except for a couple which I use to illustrate some thought). The reasoning behind not providing a quantitative treatment is that these change over time and what I intended to provide was something that will be useful to evaluate irrespective of individual business performances, as some businesses are inherently cyclic in nature. This book is also intentionally a very short one as I have tried to provide a distilled thought of various considerations that are important in my opinion. My original intended audience is for this book to make sense even to a non-investor, I had my spouse and children in mind, although I hope it will at least spark some good thought(s) if a investment oriented mind comes across it. This book does not also provide for a traditional treatment of having an index, references to other books etc and I have avoided quoting anything as I intended to share my thoughts and not mimic others. Please ensure you read and agree with the above before considering buying the book, as I do not wish to have buyers disappointed, if they were expecting a traditional book. I am aware I ask for hard earned dollars of others when I public a book and I do not wish to have a single paid reader disappointed and hence my request. Bala Thiruppanambakkam