Buffett, Bezos, Dimon appoint Dr. Atul Gawande as CEO of their newly formed health-care company
Dr. Atul Gawande will lead the joint health-care venture between Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, the three companies announced Wednesday.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced a partnership in January to tackle rising health-care costs.
They will form a new company for the venture, which will be headquartered in Boston, a hub for biotechnology and medical research. It will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints. [...]
USG takes $7 billion offer from Knauf after spurned advances
Sheetrock maker USG Corp accepted a $7 billion cash offer from German construction products maker Gebr Knauf KG on Monday after three months of back-and-forth negotiations that began when longtime USG shareholder Warren Buffett teamed up with the German bidder to sell his stake.
The companies agreed to a $44 per share deal, a bump from the $42 initially offered by the private German family-owned company in late March. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc had a 31 percent stake in USG and has said previously it would offload its stake. [...]
The Berkshire Hathaway investment dates back to 2001, when Buffett helped the company out of bankruptcy with a loan that was later converted to a stake in the company’s equity so large that a wholesale acquisition of the entire company remained one of the few ways for Berkshire to exit the investment without pushing down the share price. [...]
Buffett, Dimon urge end to quarterly profit forecasts
Investor Warren Buffett and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon are encouraging public companies to stop predicting their quarterly earnings and focus on long-term goals.
The two executives said on CNBC Thursday that companies that focus on hitting their quarterly numbers may do things that hurt them in the future, such as delaying investments or changing when certain gains are recorded. [...]
Grainger Is Caught Between an Amazon and a Buffett
[...] Intriguingly, Grainger may now have other competition via Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which last year acquired Production Tool Supply. The deal wasn't publicized, but the company has since used it to launch Berkshire eSupply, a wholesale service business that aims to provide smaller distributors with access to e-commerce platforms, fulfillment services and a greater product offering than they’d otherwise be able to support. [...]
Warren Buffet visits metro to announce new GEICO service center, 500 new jobs in Lenexa
Warren Buffett is bringing what he calls his favorite company to [the Kansas City metro area]. GEICO Insurance will open a service center in Lenexa, bringing 500 jobs.
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer and billionaire CEO Warren Buffett joined representatives from the city of Lenexa, Johnson County and Geico on Tuesday morning to make the announcement. [...]
Lenexa city leaders said the city did not offer any financial incentives to lure GEICO but said the state did offer some incentives. [...]
Warren Buffett helps Israel sell $80 million in bonds at Omaha dinner
Warren Buffett hosted a dinner in Omaha this week for investors who bought $80 million worth of Israel Bonds, a source of revenue for a country where Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has a major investment.
The dinner at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center was the second time Buffett has helped the Israeli group, the Development Corporation for Israel, formed in 1951 to raise money to build Israel’s economy. Since then, the bonds have raised about $41 billion.
Giving it Away: The Other Buffett Family Business
[...] Now 64 with two grown children, Susie Buffett has a more-than-full-time day job. Her Sherwood Foundation, formerly known as the Susan A. Buffett Foundation, gave away $141 million in 2016, according to the most recent IRS filing, funding dozens of nonprofit initiatives in education, social justice, and poverty alleviation. That’s everything from a local ballet company to Big Brothers/Big Sisters to a black police-officers group to Omaha’s Bike Union—and those are just the Bs. Each of these groups is carefully evaluated before the first check is cut. “I don’t want to come off like I’m complaining,” Buffett says. “I am grateful beyond words for what we get to do. But it’s not so easy to try to do it well, and we are trying to do it well.” [...]
Two billionaires walk into an Omaha Dairy Queen. A blizzard of excitement ensues
Omaha did a double-take when folks there spotted Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban eating lunch Monday in Buffett's hometown at the Dairy Queen near 72nd and Q streets. [...] Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, memorialized his trip to the land of Dilly Bars on his Instagram, where he shared a photo of the two men. [...]
The Omaha World-Herald got the scoop on at least one topic that came up over lunch — basketball. [...] Buffett's office would not disclose what else the two men talked about, the newspaper reported. [...]
