Berkshire News Briefs - 2/7/14

Buffett Railroad’s $5 Billion Investment Plan Tops Union Pacific (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. plans $5 billion in capital investment at BNSF Railway Co. this year, positioning the carrier to extend a lead in spending over its biggest rival. The budget marks an increase of about 25 percent from the target set a year earlier, Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF said yesterday in a statement. BNSF’s program includes $2.3 billion for its rail network and $1.6 billion for equipment, including locomotives and railcars.

You've Got It All Wrong. Here's the Real Story Behind Warren Buffett's Favorite Stock (Fool)

The seemingly obvious story around Berkshire Hathaway's outsized ownership stake in Wells Fargo is that Warren Buffett opportunistically sank a huge amount of Berkshire's capital into Wells as prices for bank stocks plunged. Like I said, it seems obvious. It fits well with the view on how Buffett invests. It's also wrong.

Big Corps. Don't All Play at Money-in-Politics (Open Secrets)

Pick a large American company, and it's a pretty safe bet that you've just named a firm that's well-represented in Washington. Virtually every industry leader has a political action committee and a few of the best lobbyists money can buy. [...] Technically, the largest firm without a PAC in its own name is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. This may sound surprising, given that Buffett, who hails from Nebraska, is hardly an unfamiliar face in Washington. However, several of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries have PACs of their own, which in combination are large enough that Berkshire Hathaway is actually one of the 20 biggest sources of PAC funds to Republican candidates this cycle.

NetJets Maintains Flight Path in the Face of Fractional Turbulence (AIN online)

A busy year for upheaval in the fractional ownership and closed-fleet private aviation sectors reached a crescendo in December when Flight Options parent company Directional Aviation Capital completed its $185 million acquisition of Bombardier’s Flexjet program. Last year also saw the collapse of Avantair, the return of Marquis Jet card founder Kenny Dichter with his new Wheels Up membership program and a move by VistaJet to enter the U.S. market. None of these events, or yet another year of fluctuating market conditions, appears to have ruffled the feathers of fractional ownership pioneer NetJets. In an interview with AIN, NetJets chairman and CEO Jordan Hansell characterized the changes as a cleansing wave of consolidation that ultimately validates his company’s business model and its plans for a $17.6 billion fleet renewal program over the next 10 years.

NetJets sees Super Bowl flights as chance to gain customers (Columbus Dispatch)

The biggest football game annually is also prime time for NetJets, which offers fractional ownership of business jets. The company has bounced back from some difficult times during the recession. Not only is its Super Bowl business brisk, but the game is providing the company a key marketing opportunity to sell the NetJets experience. “One of the benefits of the Super Bowl they get is a growth in their business,” said Scott Liston, executive vice president of the consulting firm Argus International Inc. and a former NetJets employee. “When NetJets owners fly their friends into the game with them, that experience has resulted in numerous leads,” he said.

Buffett widens lead in $1 million hedge fund bet (Fortune)

Results are in for the sixth year of the competition sometimes called the $1 million bet, and Warren Buffett -- once a piteous straggler in this 10-year wager on stock market performance -- has opened up a sizable lead over his opponent, New York asset manager Protégé Partners. Buffett's horse in the bet is a low-cost S&P index fund, and Protégé's is the averaged returns to investors (after all fees) of five hedge funds of funds that the firm carefully picked for the contest.

Berkshire Hathaway Mill Demolition (South Coast Business Bulletin)

It's just a paragraph at the bottom of a round-up of local construction news, but they do have a picture of an excavator tearing down the original Berkshire Hathaway textile mill in New Bedford, MA.

Berkshire Hathaway Mill: Demolition on the New Bedford textile mill once run by a billionaire Warren Buffet began in January after a five-year attempt to sell the building failed. The mill had been on the market for $500,000 but the building needed another $1 million in repairs, owner Roland Letendre told the Standard-Times. Letendre said he has people who are interested in the land but that he had no plans to develop the property himself. Buffet gained control of the textile mill in 1965, closing it in 1985 and selling it to Letendre for $215,000.