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I don't think anything has changed per se - I think someone just wrote an article speculating that things have changed and Buffett didn't cooperate with the article except to say the reporting contained numerous inaccuracies. The plan all along has been that all of his Berkshire shares be distributed and sold within 10 years of his death and the Susan Thompson Buffett foundation be shut down after that 10 year mark.

Yeah, that was the first thing I thought when I read that article - why would Warren care about OXY being anointed investment grade by outside agencies. He is either comfortable with the debt / pay down schedule or not. The thing becomes 'investment grade' the minute Berkshire buys it anyway.

Well, cash and cash equivalents was not $139 Billion in the Q1 2022 report either.

I think he is "legit." This FT article with quote from Sokol and several inside stories about Greg is helpful if you haven't read it. Warren Buffett’s heir apparent comes out of the shadows | Financial Times.pdf

I would be surprised if Berkshire is forced to use the equity method for American Express specifically. The 20% rule is not absolute and the presumption of influence/control can be overcome when specific agreements are in place that limit the shareholder's power. I believe Berkshire has agreements in place with AXP that would qualify. We'll find out soon enough. Berkshire used the equity method with Moody's and Burlington Northern back in the day. They don't use it with DaVita because around half of the DaVita stock is owned by the pension funds and not Berkshire itself. They are part of a control group and have multiple board seats at Kraft Heinz so that one doesn't have any leeway. Pilot Corporation will stop being an equity method investment at the end of the year and will be consolidated. Pilot has a very high revenue so that will bump up Berkshire's reported revenue. Kind of like when they bought McLane - lots of revenue but small margins.

Well one big offsetting factor is that as the free float of shares increases, Berkshire's weighting in large indices will increase toward what you would expect for their market cap. Currently, Berkshire's weighting is 'float adjusted' lower because of the large block of stock tied up by Buffett. So index funds, S&P500 particularly, will soak up some of that stock. I doubt Berkshire will buy large blocks directly from the foundations, even though that would be most efficient. Instead, they will probably continue as they are now - buying what they can on the open market (including foundation shares sold into that market each day) and occasional blocks that become available.

Yes, as John mentioned the number of shares gifted declines every year. The Gates foundation (and the 4 other foundations) are constantly selling b-shares at practically all times of the year. Any recent pressure would be primarily due to index and fund sales. BRK is a big component of financial indices and a big component of the S&P indices compared to the average daily volume traded. Off topic, any chance you chose 'greenwave' because you went to Tulane?

Interesting article on what will become of the "rest" of Buffett's estate when he passes. Probably sheds some light on why Susie was added to the board of directors. https://www.wsj.com/articles/warren-buffetts-estate-planning-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-sends-charities-scrambling-11655811074?mod=hp_lead_pos5

My primary residence homeowners policy premium increased by 10% despite $45,000 of hurricane claims for Ida and almost every insurer leaving the market where I live. People I know that can't renew their policies are seeing 2x or 3x is some cases. I think the new standing seam metal roof they paid for helped lower the premiums going forward. Oddly, USAA is still applying a "claims free discount" despite the paid out claim.

That's the thing - you are assuming he bought AAPL at 150 because that was the low of the quarter and he didn't buy more than he did. But that's not what happened - he bought AAPL at around $167.3/share in late February and tends to cluster his buys in a group around that time and then stop. Warren may have bought more Apple shares in Q2 - who knows. But he changes his mind a lot, based on other opportunities available to him, changing opinions, and the amount of money he has lying around.

Yeah you are right - basically for a regular insider reporting insider trading it is 5 calendar days (which is longer than the US's 3) but for a normal course issuer bid by the issuer, they have to file within 10 days of the end of the month that the acquisitions occurred - so quite a bit longer. some detail here (section 4.5.1) https://www.sedi.ca/sedi/new_help/english/public/PDF_en/csa_20100611_55-316_qa-sedi_ENG.pdf

Not sure where to post this but one local restaurant has won their case against Lloyd's in the Louisiana court of appeals. Not sure this will be an ultimate win for them but I'm no expert on these things. I know the industry has won almost all their cases as far as denying coverage for physical damage due to the virus / gov. shutdown. I'm sure others here know more about how these have been shaking out. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/la-appeals-court-dishes-up-win-restaurant-covid-biz-interruption-case-2022-06-17/ Fun fact, this restaurant, "Oceana Grill," is absolutely disgusting and happens to also be the site of my only appearance on the TV show Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. My friend was in town to direct the episode and he put us in the show. It was so foul I can't even describe it. In the "relaunch" scene where they reintroduce the "fixed" restaurant a waitress dropped our entire bottle of red wine, which shattered and essentially filled my wife's leather purse with shards of glass and red wine. The funniest part was the owner of this restaurant is a total coke-head and kept forgetting he was mic'ed up for the TV show and just continuously went into neighboring establishments' bathrooms to snort more coke - all of which was fully appreciated by the TV show's control room. Again, if you are ever in New Orleans - do not eat here. https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20220615/NEWS06/912350568/Restaurant-entitled-to-business-interruption-cover-State-appeals-court-Cajun-Co

Any bets that it's not a crypto guy this time around? by the way, apparently you can track Justin Sun's (2019 lunch winner) crypto wallet assets in real time? https://debank.com/profile/0x3ddfa8ec3052539b6c9549f12cea2c295cff5296

Well that would certainly surprise me. They have only filed with the SEC on about $800 million of additional stock purchases so far during Q2 (the most recent shares of HPQ and OXY). Add in whatever repurchase activity we can deduce from Warren's recent SEC filings (say $1.2 Billion plus whatever they buy post 6/14). Let's call it $2.5 Billion. So that would total to about $3.3 Billion, which would be less than one quarter's cash earnings plus float growth. Float grew at $1 Billion last quarter but has been averaging over $2 Billion per quarter lately. Unless he was adding to securities like AAPL, CVX or C that would not require SEC filings anytime soon or buying stuff he is under 10% on (pretty much rules out additional Activision shares so far unless we see a filing soon) - you may actually see cash increase during the quarter. They also have two acquisitions coming up in Q4 to pay for, Alleghany and a big chunk of Pilot Corporation. Since they had ~$103 Billion cash at the insurance companies at the end of Q1, I would be shocked it they took it down to $30-$40 in Q2. But who knows... *edit: I should add that we may see more "cash" come off the balance sheet because he moves slightly out on duration with US treasury bonds. In Q1 he added $5.5 Billion in US treasury fixed maturity securities - I would bet that these are very short dated and barely outside of 'cash and cash equivalents.' Also as time marches on, these new purchases revert to 'cash equivalents' as they approach maturity. It wouldn't surprise me to see him add to 2 year, 52-week, 26-week and 13-week US government securities, which would look like depleting cash but it's not quite the same as buying equities.

Bill, maybe you can answer this question for me... Why has the outstanding share count of the A-shares only declined by 1,365 A-shares since April when the press release by Buffett says he - just that day - converted 9,608 of his A-shares into B-shares. As we all know, the shares are only convertible one-way. https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/jun1422.pdf edit: I should note I am not doubting your math - I get the same share count as you for A-shares when I use 37.4% being his remaining 229,016 shares and I get the same figures as you for total share count using 15.6% total economic interest in Berkshire.

Yeah my wife's friends were texting us that full transcript of the interview over the weekend. It is impressive but of course this instance of a LaMDA chatbot has been well trained to reply like that. The cajun priest was the one that "taught" this instance to "meditate" in the first place. In the end, he was basically fooled by the technology, which is surprising since he should know better how the technology works. A lot of people reading the entire transcript will be convinced like Lemoine was. Now he's practically organizing a labor union for the chatbot instances...

Many people do not realize that Warren exercises almost every day. He has a treadmill and a personal trainer. Warren listened to his doctors (eventually) when told that he needed to exercise if he wanted to keep doing what he loves. Staying in the game for longer is more important to Warren than avoiding exercise. Here is an excerpt from a book, but Warren has mentioned the training in several interviews. I believe he mentioned it in Charlie Rose's recent comeback interview as well. https://www.prweb.com/releases/buffett/michelle/prweb907864.htm Warren's trainer: https://www.omahawbfitness.com/home

In my experience, or at least in my state, if a plaintiff offers to settle with the insured for the policy limit or below and the insurance company declines to take that settlement - the insurer is now on the hook for paying ultimate awards beyond the policy limits. That is why there will frequently be a settlement proposed a couple bucks below the policy limit even when it seems bonkers at the time. In this case, she offered to settle the claim for $1 million and GEICO did not take her up on it. That was pre-arbitration.

This is the CEO of soon-to-be-consolidated-subsidiary Pilot Corporation talking about Union Pacific's demands that Pilot reduce their rail shipments by up to 50% on some routes. Pilot distributes 20% of the diesel and 30% of the diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) in the country. Much of this is shipped by rail. I wonder what Union Pacific's side of this story is?

Microsoft has joined Google and Facebook to participate in a group potentially opposing MidAmerican's proposed $3.9B Wind PRIME wind+solar project in Iowa. MidAmerican is seeking approval and would like an 11.25% regulated return. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-versus-big-tech-130015233.html

Bloomberg is running an article today saying that big tech companies (Google, Meta & Microsoft) are opposing MidAmerican's proposed $3.9 Billion "Wind PRIME" project (2042 megawatts of wind + 50 megawatts of solar). MidAmerican is asking state regulators for approval and an 11.25% guaranteed return. https://www.midamericanenergy.com/newsroom/2022-wind-prime-announcement bloomberg article (some paywall) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/it-s-warren-buffett-versus-big-tech-in-iowa-s-latest-wind-farm-debate?srnd=premium#xj4y7vzkg

Not sure I am understanding your post but the figures posted here are not "per share" figures if that helps.

Thanks for the detailed run down. You may be interested in (or entertained by) this case if you haven't already seen it. Seems possible that it is another case of denying coverage and having it look like you chose not to defend your insured in court and then having the whole thing blow up on you without ever having the opportunity to defend your interests in court. https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=187183 Cliffs notes: A couple get intimate in a GEICO insured vehicle. One catches HPV from the other. GEICO told to pay $5.2 million. The HPV-giving party knew they had HPV because they were previously told that their throat cancer tumor tested positive for HPV. GEICO denies claim. The intimate couple appears to be working together (likely fraud imo), went to arbitration, were awarded a ton of money and GEICO is told to pay it. Of course they also offered to settle within the policy liability limits earlier ($1m), which I understand to have the effect of effectively eliminating the policy liability limit once GEICO declines to accept the settlement offer within the policy limits. The linked case is GEICO's appeal (which they lost).

Maybe ask @Tim Eriksen if you are interested in "expert market" type securities?

Some here might be interested in the minutiae of National Indemnity's business - this lawsuit was recently filed by NICO against 7 reinsurers for not paying their share of an asbestos settlement NICO agreed to with the state of Montana arising from policies written by NICO in 1973-75 (after Berkshire bought NICO but before Ajit was hired). NICO settled with Montana in April 2022 for $157 million to resolve the matter (some of this had already been paid) and sent a bill to each of the 7 reinsurers who basically indicated they weren't paying. Page 6 and 7 of the lawsuit show the figures. NICO has billed the reinsurance companies (many of them successors to the original companies) a total of $104.5m. show_temp.pl-11.pdf