http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/buffett-deal-pursuit-reshapes-berkshire-as-mutual-fund-era-ends
Weeks from his 85th birthday, Warren Buffett is again seeking to reshape Berkshire Hathaway Inc. with the next few decades in mind.
The second-richest man in the U.S. is in talks to buy Precision Castparts Corp., which makes equipment for the aerospace and energy industries, and had a market value of more than $26 billion Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Acquiring the company would add about $10 billion in annual revenue and 30,000 employees, boosting the workforce at Berkshire by almost 10 percent.
A deal would push Berkshire further into heavy industry and cut reliance on insurance and stock picking, growth engines for most of Buffett’s 50 years in charge. Today’s Berkshire, with BNSF railroad and renewable energy holdings, could hardly have been imagined in the mid 1990s when the Buffalo News and shoe businesses were prominent units and the company was considered a mutual fund because of its equity holdings.
“Those days are gone,” Lawrence Cunningham, a professor at George Washington University and author of the book “Berkshire Beyond Buffett,” said in an interview. “It’s really an industrial operation now.”
OUT WITH THE FINANCE, ON WITH THE MANUFACTURING...BUT ISN'T IT TOO LATE?
= new reply since forum marked as read