WARREN BUFFETT WATCH Shareholder Meeting Special Edition
Buffett: We’re not going to buy control of Occidental
Warren Buffett is dashing the hopes of anyone betting that Berkshire Hathaway’s ongoing purchases of Occidental Petroleum stock would lead to an acquisition of the entire company.
During a discussion at today’s Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha about the many challenges facing oil companies, Buffett was straightforward. “There’s speculation about us buying control. We’re not going to buy control. We wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean Berkshire won’t be adding to its 211.7 million share stake. which is almost 24% of OXY outstanding shares and was valued at more than $12.8 billion at Friday’s close. (We could be seeing more purchases soon, now that the stock has dropped back to around $60, the area in which many previous buys have been made.)
“We love the shares we have. We may or may not own more in the future.”
Buffett also said he’s “glad” that as part of its 2019 deal to help finance Occidental’s purchase of Anadarko, Berkshire received warrants to buy 84 million OXY shares at $59.62 each.
Buffett: We like Occidental’s position in the Permian Basin
Buffett on Microsoft-Activision deal: Microsoft has met the opposition more than halfway
Today, Buffett would not say whether Berkshire has sold any of that stock, which closed Friday at $76 per share.
He did say he thinks Microsoft has “met the opposition, it seems to me, more than halfway, but that doesn’t mean that it gets done.”
“Not everything that should happen, does happen…”
He added, “I think the British government is making a mistake in this case, but that’s life in the big city, as Charlie would say.”
“What we do will depend on a lot of things.”
American public is “as confused about banking as ever”
Buffett is blaming politicians, regulators, and the media for failing to assure Americans that their all of their bank deposits are safe, arguing Washington would do whatever is needed to protect them, regardless of their size.
“Although there’s a $250,000 limit on FDIC [insurance], the FDIC and the U.S. government and the American public have no interest in having a bank fail and have deposits actually lost by people,” citing the move by regulators to backstop all deposits at the failed Silicon Valley Bank.
Failing to do that, Buffett said, would have been “catastrophic.”
Buffett said he has his own personal money in a local bank, and even though he has deposited more than the $250,000 that is explicitly guaranteed by the FDIC, “I don’t worry about it in the least.”
SVB failure would have been ‘catastrophic’ without government backstop
While he thinks bank customers don’t have to worry, Berkshire is being very “cautious” about owning bank stocks because the industry has been changing rapidly.
“We don’t know where the shareholders of the big banks … or the regional banks, or any bank, are heading.”
He did reaffirm his support for Berkshire’s $28.6 billion dollar stake in Bank of America, saying, “I like the management.”
And while Berkshire has reduced other bank holdings over the past six months, Buffett remains loyal to BofA, citing his initiation of the 2011 deal in which Berkshire invested $5 billion in the bank when it was struggling.
“I proposed the deal to them, so I’m
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