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Tag: Berkshire Hathaway

  • Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway acquires stake in Paramount Global

    Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway acquires stake in Paramount Global

    Mumbai: Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway has invested $2.6 billion in Paramount Global in the first quarter of 2022, as per a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that disclosed the quarterly stock trading activity of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company.

    On Monday, Paramount Global’s total market cap stood at $18.3 billion meaning Buffet’s stake in the company amounts to 15 per cent. As per a Variety report, Berkshire Hathaway purchased Class B shares whose owners do not have the same voting rights as Class A share owners largely held by National Amusements Inc, the holding company promoted by Shari Redstone.

    Paramount Global owns and operates the streaming service Paramount+ that competes with the streaming services of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Apple and more. It also owns CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Showtime.

    As chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet has gained a reputation as a value investor over his career. He is known for picking shares in companies that he believes are undervalued or misunderstood by the markets. He has been an on and off shareholder in Paramount Global’s predecessor Viacom. 

  • Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in talks to buy stake in India’s Paytm

    Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in talks to buy stake in India’s Paytm

    MUMBAI: Berkshire Hathaway is in talks to invest about Rs 2,000-2,500 crore in Paytm parent One97 Communications, in what could be the first direct investment in India, according to an Economic Times report.

    Berkshire, the conglomerate run by billionaire Warren Buffett, is said to pick up a 3-4 per cent stake in Paytm’s parent and the deal is being done through a primary subscription of shares, the paper said citing people familiar with the matter.

    The Noida-based company said last month that it conducted 5 billion transactions worth $50 billion in gross transaction value (GTV) on an annualised basis based on its performance in June. It saw total income increase by 38 per cent to Rs 828 crore with losses of Rs 899.6 crore in the year ended March 2017, according to the Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings.

    If the transaction goes through, it will give Paytm more firepower to strengthen its market leadership against Flipkart-owned Phonepe and Google’s Tez besides potential competition from Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Reliance Jio.

    One of Berkshire’s key fund managers, Todd Combs, who is also seen as a potential chief investment officer at the company, is leading the transaction, as per the reports.

    Through One97 Communications, the company owns 49 per cent in Paytm Payments Bank with the remaining stake held by Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma in his personal capacity as per regulations.

    Berkshire’s investment could be clinched in the coming weeks, valuing Paytm at over $10 billion, the report stated.

    Japan’s SoftBank and China’s Alibaba Group are among the major backers of Paytm.

  • Atul Gawande appointed CEO of Amazon-JP Morgan joint venture

    Atul Gawande appointed CEO of Amazon-JP Morgan joint venture

    MUMBAI: Indian-American surgeon Atul Gawande has been appointed to lead the health care venture formed by e-commerce giants Amazon, JP Morgan and Berkshine Hathway.

    Gawande has taken the role of CEO at the newly formed entity and will officially start working from July. The heath care company headquartered in Boston, US, will be an independent organisation and work as an NGO (free from profit making incentives and constrains).

    Thrilled to be working with the company, Gawande said, “I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better health care delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world.”

    Gawande mentioned that this work will take time but must be done. “The system is broken, and better is possible.”

    The newly appointed CEO practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.

    Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said, “All felt that better care can be delivered and that rising costs can be checked. Jamie, Jeff and I are confident that we have found in Atul the leader who will get this important job done”.

    JPMorgan chairman and CEO of Chase Jamie Dimon added, ”Together, we have the talent and resources to make things better, and it is our responsibility to do so. We’re so grateful for the countless statements of support and offers to help and participate, and we’re so fortunate to have attracted such an extraordinary leader and innovator as Atul.”

    The companies’ executives Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon had said in January that their companies would work together to give their combined 8,40,000 employees better health care choices. With this venture, they hope to bring down costs, both for their workers and their companies.

    He’s a staff writer for The New Yorker and has written four New York Times bestsellers.

    It is possible that MacArthur genius grant recipient and the Rhodes Scholar will try a different approach to make the health care ecosystem . Amazon, after all, is known for upending the markets they enter.

  • Telecom giant Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8 billion; to merge Yahoo and AOL

    Telecom giant Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8 billion; to merge Yahoo and AOL

    MUMBAI: After much anticipation and speculation, word is out that US based telecommunication giant, Verizon will buy Yahoo for USD 4.83 billion in cash at the end of a closely-scrutinized, six-month sale process.

    Yahoo first put itself up for sale in February and it fielded multiple bids from almost 40 different types of buyers including AT&T; Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert with financial backing from Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett; and private equity firms TPG and Vector Capital Management.

    But finally Yahoo informed the other bidders on Saturday that it has sealed the deal with Verizon.

    “Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a press release. “The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo. This transaction also sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social.”

    When it comes to how Yahoo, that was the front door to the web for many in the 90s and the early 2000s, and its internal functioning, Verizon has a few plans. It has been decided that Yahoo and AOL will be brought together as a new group that AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong will supervise. It must be noted that Verizon has earlier bought AOL for USD 4.4 billion last year.

    “Our mission at AOL is to build brands people love, and we will continue to invest in and grow them,” he said in a press release. “Yahoo has been a long-time investor in premium content and created some of the most beloved consumer brands in key categories like sports, news and finance… We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished.”

    Marissa Mayer is not expected to stay on board, but that has not yet been confirmed by either company.

    Verizon’s acquisition is of “core” Yahoo, which includes search, email, advertising products, and the media business (including Yahoo Finance).

    Verizon has made a string of acquisitions in an apparent effort to move beyond a telecom provider into a media-and-mobile-advertising powerhouse that can compete with Google. Many believe buying Yahoo is a savvy move for Verizon. In addition to getting the fifth-most visited web site in the US, Verizon gets assets like Tumblr, Flickr, Polyvore and digital ad tools Flurry and BrightRoll.

    (Sourced from nytimes.com and Yahoo Finance)

  • Telecom giant Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8 billion; to merge Yahoo and AOL

    Telecom giant Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8 billion; to merge Yahoo and AOL

    MUMBAI: After much anticipation and speculation, word is out that US based telecommunication giant, Verizon will buy Yahoo for USD 4.83 billion in cash at the end of a closely-scrutinized, six-month sale process.

    Yahoo first put itself up for sale in February and it fielded multiple bids from almost 40 different types of buyers including AT&T; Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert with financial backing from Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett; and private equity firms TPG and Vector Capital Management.

    But finally Yahoo informed the other bidders on Saturday that it has sealed the deal with Verizon.

    “Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a press release. “The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo. This transaction also sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social.”

    When it comes to how Yahoo, that was the front door to the web for many in the 90s and the early 2000s, and its internal functioning, Verizon has a few plans. It has been decided that Yahoo and AOL will be brought together as a new group that AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong will supervise. It must be noted that Verizon has earlier bought AOL for USD 4.4 billion last year.

    “Our mission at AOL is to build brands people love, and we will continue to invest in and grow them,” he said in a press release. “Yahoo has been a long-time investor in premium content and created some of the most beloved consumer brands in key categories like sports, news and finance… We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished.”

    Marissa Mayer is not expected to stay on board, but that has not yet been confirmed by either company.

    Verizon’s acquisition is of “core” Yahoo, which includes search, email, advertising products, and the media business (including Yahoo Finance).

    Verizon has made a string of acquisitions in an apparent effort to move beyond a telecom provider into a media-and-mobile-advertising powerhouse that can compete with Google. Many believe buying Yahoo is a savvy move for Verizon. In addition to getting the fifth-most visited web site in the US, Verizon gets assets like Tumblr, Flickr, Polyvore and digital ad tools Flurry and BrightRoll.

    (Sourced from nytimes.com and Yahoo Finance)

  • Warren Buffett picks up stake in Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox

    Warren Buffett picks up stake in Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox

    MUMBAI: Billionaire Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway picked up a stake in Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox during the fourth quarter last year. Buffett’s company bought 4.7 million shares in News Corp and at Tuesday’s closing price of $34 per share, the stake was worth approximately $160 million.

     

    In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Berkshire Hathaway said that it bought 4.7 million shares in Murdoch’s company. The companies that fall under the 21st Century Fox umbrella are: 20th Century Fox movie studio, Fox Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox Television, Fox News, FX and Fox Sports.

     

    Berkshire Hathaway has also increased its stake in cable television provider Charter Communications last year from approximately five million shares to 6.2 million during the fourth quarter. Additionally, the company also has stakes in other media and entertainment conglomerates like satellite television company DirecTV (31.4 million shares), Liberty Global (18.2 million shares), Liberty Media (12 million shares) and Viacom (8.6 million shares).

     

    While he upped his investment in media companies, the octogenarian business magnate dumped his stakes in oil companies Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, at a time when oil prices have been on a downslide. His firm offloaded 41 million shares worth approximately $3.7 billion of Exxon, which is the largest US oil company.