Berkshire News Briefs - 4/12/16

Buffett Deputy Jain Will Add Gen Re Oversight as Montross Exits (Bloomberg)

Ajit Jain, long considered a top candidate to replace billionaire Warren Buffett as chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is expanding his oversight of the company’s insurance operations.

Gen Re, one of the major reinsurance businesses at Berkshire, said Tuesday that CEO Tad Montross, 60, will step down by the end of this year. His replacement hasn’t been named, but will report to Jain, said Sabine Denne, a spokeswoman for the reinsurer.

Berkshire Hathaway Sees Power Market as Electrons' Match.com (Bloomberg)

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s energy unit has been courting three dozen power transmission operators in the western U.S. to join its utilities and the California grid in trading power across their borders electronically and instantaneously. This means traders wouldn’t need to pick up the phone or send e-mails each hour to schedule the purchase and sale of renewables while hoping the sun and wind hold out until the next hour.

This so-called Energy Imbalance Market is the equivalent of creating a “Match.com for electrons,” Jonathan Weisgall, vice president of government relations at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, said [...]

Clayton Homes buys Alabama manufactured-housing company (Knoxville News Sentinel)

Maryville-based Clayton Homes has acquired manufactured-home builder River Birch Homes of Hackleburg, Ala.

In a release, Clayton Homes said the purchase includes all operating assets of River Birch Homes, and is effective immediately.

River Birch, which makes single- and multi-section homes and markets them in nine states throughout the Southeast, has nearly 240 employees in the Hackleburg area, in northwest Alabama.

The company was started in 1997 by owners Delmo Payne and Gerald Terrell.

Acme Brick Co. to close Springfield and Edina brick facilities for good this year (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Texas-based Acme Brick Co. will officially shut its Minnesota operations for good later this year, a move that will affect 19 employees.

The company will keep its Edina sales office open to serve customer orders through Sept. 30. Its Great Lakes Plant in Springfield, Minn., which stopped producing bricks in 2014, will not restart production as expected. Instead it will sell its remaining inventory at the Edina facility and through select distributors.

Acme acquired the Great Lakes Plant in January 2008. It was Minnesota’s last operating brick plant and was formerly part of Ochs Brick Co. [...]

Fire at Nebraska Furniture Mart warehouse caused estimated $1.4 million in damage (Omaha World-Herald)

Insurance officials still are investigating the cause of a fire that caused an estimated $1.4 million in damage in Nebraska Furniture Mart’s flooring warehouse Sunday.

The flooring center remained closed Monday, but the retailer is operating normally otherwise.

The fire involved boxes of laminate flooring and as a result was quite smoky, retired Furniture Mart executive Bob Batt said. [...]

Acquisitions lead Lubrizol to expand its offerings (Crain's Cleveland Business)

Lubrizol Corp. is expanding its health care product offerings and investing $15 million in the effort, the Wickliffe-based company announced at the Medical Design and Manufacturing West trade show and conference in Anaheim.

Expanding Lubrizol LifeSciences offerings has in part been made possible with the recent acquisition of Vesta Inc. and Particle Sciences, whose capabilities are turning the company’s health-care business into the “polymer-based drug delivery company” of the future, company reps said [...]

Shaw industries land on Forbes' "America's Best Employers of 2016" list (Chatanooga Times Free Press)

Calhoun-based Mohawk Industries, the world's largest flooring maker, and Dalton-based Shaw Industries, the world's largest carpet maker, are two the best industrial manufacturers in the country to work for, according to the latest Forbes' "America's Best Employers of 2016" list. [...]

Shaw ranked 282 overall [out of 30,000], and number 18 in the engineering/manufacturing category. [...]

Shaw is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., with more than $4.8 billion in sales and more than 22,000 employees.

Chinese aviation firm to take 25% stake in NetJets China (Flight Global)

Chinese business aircraft manager Business Aviation Asia will take a 25% stake in the China unit of fractional ownership firm NetJets. [...]

NetJets China is a joint venture between the US-based fractional ownership giant and a consortium of Chinese investors, led by private equity firm Hony Capital and Fung Investments. It operates two aircraft on a charter basis in the mainland. [...]

Initial bids for Kansas utility Westar Energy due this week (Utility Dive)

Initial bids for Westar Energy are due this week, according to Bloomberg, and the company has reportedly been courted by a wide range of potential investors, from Canadian investment companies to rival utility Ameren.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has also been named as a potential suitor, with the Hillsboro Free Press reporting it is not the first time the billionaire investor has considered acquiring the utility. [...]

Brooks Unveils London Transit-Inspired Adrenaline GTS 16 (Footwear News)

Brooks Unveils Boston Marathon Shoe Inspired By New England Lifestyle (Footwear News)

Brooks Running is rolling out some unique-looking running shoes in conjunction with some of the most popular marathons.

Top running brands are getting ready for the upcoming Boston Marathon, prepping sneakers for the celebrated race. One such brand is Brooks, with a reimagined iteration of its Adrenaline GTS 16, hitting stores in April. The Brooks “Nantucket” Adrenaline GTS 16 is scheduled to hit stores Friday and retail for $130.

New book offers detailed analysis of Buffett’s investments (Omaha World-Herald)

Yefei Lu, a portfolio manager for Shareholder Value Management of Frankfurt, Germany, analyzes 20 of Berkshire’s investments, from the Sanborn Map Co. in 1958 to IBM in 2011, in a forthcoming book, “Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett” [...]

In a final chapter titled “What We Can Learn From Buffett,” Lu says Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., seeks “an abundance of relevant objective data for the companies in question.”