Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, NYSE: BRK.B) is a conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., that oversees and manages a number of subsidiary companies. Berkshire Hathaway's core business is insurance, including property and casualty insurance, reinsurance and specialty nonstandard insurance. The Company averaged a high annual return to its shareholders for the last 25 years while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt.[citation needed]
Warren Buffett is the company's chairman and CEO. Buffett has used the "float" provided by Berkshire Hathaway's insurance operations (a policyholder's money which it holds temporarily until claims are paid out) to finance his investments. In the early part of his career at Berkshire, he focused on long-term investments in publicly quoted stocks, but more recently he has turned to buying whole companies. Berkshire now owns a diverse range of businesses including candy production; retail, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, jewelry sales; newspaper publishing; manufacture and distribution of uniforms; and manufacture, import and distribution of footwear.
---------------
History
Berkshire Hathaway was founded as a textile manufacturing company in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island by Oliver Chace. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the "Founder of the American Industrial Revolution", and founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929 the Valley Falls Company merged with Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates, another textile company that was founded as the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company in Adams, Massachusetts in 1889. The combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates.[1]
In 1955 Berkshire Spinning merged with the Hathaway Manufacturing Company which was founded in 1888 in New Bedford, Massachusetts by Horatio Hathaway as a cotton milling business. Hathaway was successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a general decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression. After the merger, Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford, Massachusetts. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, accompanied by large layoffs.
In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway. After some clashes with the Stanton family, he bought up enough shares to change the management and soon controlled the company.
Buffett initially maintained Berkshire's core business of textile milling, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry and other investments. Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO), which forms the core of its insurance operations today (and is a major source of capital for Berkshire Hathaway's other investments). In 1985, the last textile operations (Hathaway's historic core) were shut down.
---------------
Berkshire facts
Berkshire's Class A shares sold for over $150,000 as of December 7, 2007, making them the highest-priced shares on the New York Stock Exchange, in part because they have never had a stock split. Shares closed over $100,000 for the first time October 23, 2006. Berkshire Class B shares trade at a fraction (1/30) of the Class A prices. Despite its size, Berkshire is not included in broad stock market indexes such as the S&P 500.
Berkshire's CEO, Warren Buffett, is respected for his investment prowess and his deep understanding of a wide spectrum of businesses. His annual chairman letters are read and quoted widely. Barron's Magazine named Berkshire the most respected company in the world in 2007 based on a survey of American money managers.[1]
As of 2005, Buffett owns 38% of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire's Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger also holds a stake big enough to make him a billionaire, and early investments in Berkshire by David Gottesman and Franklin Otis Booth resulted in their becoming billionaires as well. Bill Gates' Cascade Investments LLC is the second largest shareholder of Berkshire and owns more than 5% of class B shares.
Berkshire Hathaway is notable in that it has never split its shares, which not only contributed to their high per-share price but also significantly reduced the liquidity of the stock. This refusal to split the stock reflects the management's desire to attract long-term investors as opposed to short-term speculators. However, Berkshire Hathaway has created a Class B stock, with an ownership value of 1/30th of that of the original shares (now Class A) and 1/200th of the per-share voting rights. Holders of Class A stock are allowed to convert their stock to Class B, though not vice versa.
Buffett was reluctant to create the Class B shares, but did so to thwart the creation of unit trusts that would have marketed themselves as Berkshire look-alikes. As Buffett said in his 1995 shareholder letter:
"The unit trusts that have recently surfaced fly in the face of these goals. They would be sold by brokers working for big commissions, would impose other burdensome costs on their shareholders, and would be marketed en masse to unsophisticated buyers, apt to be seduced by our past record and beguiled by the publicity Berkshire and I have received in recent years. The sure outcome: a multitude of investors destined to be disappointed."
Berkshire's annual shareholders' meetings, taking place in the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska, are routinely visited by 20,000 people[2]. The 2007 meeting had an attendance of approximately 27,000. The meetings, nicknamed "Woodstock for Capitalists", are considered Omaha's largest annual event along with the baseball College World Series[3]. Known for their humor and light-heartedness, the meetings typically start with a movie made for Berkshire shareholders. The 2004 movie featured Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of 'The Warrenator' who travels through time to stop Buffett and Munger's attempt to save the world from a "mega" corporation formed by Microsoft-Starbucks-Wal-Mart. Schwarzenegger is later shown arguing in a gym with Buffett regarding Proposition 13.[4] The 2006 movie depicted actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Nicollette Sheridan lusting after Munger.[5] The meeting is also an opportunity for investors to ask Mr. Buffett questions, which is scheduled to last six hours.
The salary for the CEO is US$100,000 per year with no stock options, which is among the lowest CEO salary [2] for other large companies in the United States
---------------
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway are: Howard Graham Buffett, Warren Buffett, Susan Decker, Bill Gates, David Gottesman, Charlotte Guyman, Donald Keough, Charlie Munger, Thomas S. Murphy, Ronald Olson, and Walter Scott Jr.
---------------
Common stock holdings
This includes outstanding stock as reported in the last SEC EDGAR filing (Form 13F), and the latest annual report.

American Express Co. (13.1%)
American Standard Companies
Anheuser-Busch Cos. (4.8%)
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (17.5%)
Carmax (10%)
The Coca-Cola Company (8.6%)
Comcast
Comdisco
ConocoPhillips (1.1%)
Costco Wholesale
Diageo PLC
Gannett
General Electric
GlaxoSmithKline
The Home Depot
H&R Block Inc. (sold out in 2007)
Ingersoll Rand
Iron Mountain
Johnson & Johnson (2.2%)
Kraft Foods (8.1%)
Lexmark International (sold out in 2006)
Lowe's Companies
M&T Bank (6.1%)
Moody’s Corporation (19.1%)
Mueller Industries (sold out in 2006)
Nike
Norfolk Southern Corp.
Outback Steakhouse
PetroChina (unloaded 07)
Pier 1 Imports (sold out in 2007)
Posco (4.5%)
Procter & Gamble Co. (3.3%)
Sanofi-Aventis (1.3%)
Sealed Air (sold out in 2006)
ServiceMaster
Shaw Communications
SunTrust Banks
Tesco (2.9%)
Tyco International
UnitedHealth Group
United Parcel Service
USG (19.0%)
U.S. Bancorp (4.4%)
USG Corp (17.2%)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (0.5%)
The Washington Post Company (18.2%)
Wells Fargo (9.2%)
Wesco Financial Corporation
White Mountains Insurance (16.3%)
---------------
List of assets owned by Berkshire Hathaway

درێژه‌ی باسه‌که‌