America's ninth-most-valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $1.1trn as of May 2025. Originally a textile-maker, it was bought by Warren Buffett in 1965 and transformed into a financial colossus. It is a sprawling, analogue and fraternal conglomerate that long revolved around its singular boss.
Berkshire is America's second-largest property-and-liability insurer, and holds tradeable stocks, bonds and cash worth nearly $700bn. It is also an industrial conglomerate, controlling around 200 companies including BNSF, one of four "class 1" railroads in America; a collection of power utilities; and consumer brands from Brooks running shoes to See's candy. Among its major equity holdings are Apple ($65bn), American Express ($58bn), Bank of America ($32bn), Coca-Cola ($28bn), Moody's ($13bn), a fifth of Occidental Petroleum, and slivers of Visa ($3bn) and Mastercard ($2bn). It also holds an 8% stake in Chubb, another insurer.
Buffett stepped down as chief executive on December 31st 2025, handing the role to Gregory Abel, who had run Berkshire's non-insurance activities. Buffett remains chairman of the board. The defection in December 2025 of Todd Combs, one of Buffett's top investment lieutenants, to JPMorgan Chase was a worry, since Abel is not a stock-picker but came up through the energy business.
Berkshire held $380bn in cash as of late 2025; by mid-2026 the pile was approaching $400bn, equivalent to about 40% of its market capitalisation—double its average of the past two decades. At the end of March 2025 it held $348bn in cash and short-term American government debt, accounting for 5% of the outstanding Treasury market. If Berkshire were a country, it would be the tenth-largest holder of American government debt, above India, Switzerland and Taiwan. For the first time in two decades, the firm owns more cash than listed equities. As interest rates come down, the cost of not putting the cash pile to work rises. In recent years Berkshire has bought back almost none of its own shares, presumably because it thinks they are overvalued, and has not paid a dividend since 1967. During the year to early May 2026 Berkshire shares undershot the market by 40 percentage points, a gap as wide as in 1999.
From 1965 to the end of 2024, Berkshire's market value increased by more than 5,500,000%, with a compounded annual return of almost 20%. Its stock rose 14% in the first months of 2025, while the S&P 500 fell by 4%.
In 1967 Berkshire bought National Indemnity, a Nebraskan insurer. Together with GEICO, a car insurer, and a large reinsurance business, its insurance arm provides much of Berkshire's capital. Policyholders pay premiums before insurers pay claims; when run profitably, the insurer can invest those premiums and pocket the returns. Unusually, half of the assets held by Berkshire's insurance arm are invested in a concentrated portfolio of stocks rather than bonds. BNSF was owned first by National Indemnity before becoming a directly held subsidiary of Berkshire in 2023. The quarter of Occidental Petroleum Berkshire owns is also housed by the insurer.
Berkshire's record as an operator is patchier than its performance as an investor. Since being bought by Berkshire in 2010, BNSF's profit margins have disappointed. In 2013 Berkshire teamed up with 3G Capital, a private-equity firm, to buy Heinz, which it then merged with Kraft. It has been a disaster; in September 2025 Kraft Heinz said it would split in two. Berkshire takes an uncontrolling approach to corporate control and does not seek synergies across its portfolio.
Berkshire has never paid a dividend since 1967 and, by its own rules, its current lofty valuation precludes buybacks. It recently appointed its first general counsel. Loyal holders of Berkshire's super-voting "class A" shares will give Abel time, reckons Lawrence Cunningham of the University of Delaware. But rising institutional ownership of "class B" shares—and the prospect of Buffett's stake converting to B shares after his corporeal departure—make a transition to more ordinary governance inevitable.
Buffett has poured billions into several of Japan's trading conglomerates, including Mitsubishi and Sumitomo. Among companies worth over $5bn with price-to-earnings ratios below ten, 80% by value are domiciled outside America. New investments in utilities or Japanese trading houses—Abel's areas of expertise—are considered likely.
Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund manager, says he is building his own version of Berkshire at Howard Hughes, a real-estate firm his fund owns half of.
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