These days, Warren Buffett likes to say he’s on the hunt for elephant-sized acquisitions.
But the Oracle of Omaha has had trouble finding multibillion-dollar deals that move the needle
for his investment company Berkshire Hathaway.
And that is a problem when you have a big cash pile sitting on your balance sheet.
Shareholders may worship Buffett and his co-partner, Charlie Munger, but at some point they will
demand some of that money back either via share buybacks or dividends.
Buffett has argued that his long-term track record of outperformance against the S&P 500
speaks for itself. Investors should be patient, he says.
The good news for Buffett is that one opportunity has already fallen into his lap this year.
Berkshire pledged $10bn to buy preference shares in Occidental Petroleum.
The Texas oil group needed financing to back its $55bn takeover of rival Anadarko Petroleum.
That would help it win a bidding war for Anadarko against larger rival Chevron.
It was the first big Berkshire deal in a while,
But even at $10bn, it’s not as big as Buffett would like.
The last truly big Berkshire takeover came in 2016, when Buffett’s group spent $37bn
to purchase industrial goods company Precision Castparts.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Berkshire in big deals.
It backed a 2013 takeover of US condiments group Heinz and later combined it with Kraft
Foods to create a major US foods group in 2015.
Two years later, Kraft Heinz tried to take over Anglo-Dutch group Unilever for $143bn.
But it had to back out after its approach was publicly rebuffed.
Warren Buffett, after all, doesn’t like to be associated with hostile deals.
Since the Unilever bid, Kraft Heinz has struggled.
Recently it had to make a $15bn writedown and even Buffett had to admit that he overpaid
when combining Kraft with Heinz.
So where will Buffett look next? Brexit Britain, where many companies could face an uncertain
future, may be one place where Berkshire sees value.
In an interview with the FT, Buffett said he is ready to buy something in the UK tomorrow.