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What's going on?
Global stocks have taken a bath in recent days, but theres at least one investor buying the dip. News broke late on Wednesday that billionaire Bill Ackmans investment firm had taken a large stake in that of another billionaire Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway.
What does this mean?
Its a match made in heaven: both Buffett and Ackman are value investors who seek out strong, hard-to-compete-with companies they think the markets underestimating. For Buffett, the latest firm to fall into that category is Amazon: after years of avoiding the ecommerce giant, $500 billion Berkshire upped its stake in the company to more than $1 billion last quarter.
But apart from funding an oil merger, Buffett hasnt seen many other big investment opportunities recently. Berkshire has built up a record $122 billion cash pile, with Buffett convinced even shares in his own firm look too expensive to justify increasing current buybacks. Bill Ackman, however, begs to differ: in its first big bet since Starbucks last year, his Pershing Square fund has invested $750 million in Berkshire.
Why should I care?
For markets: One wants dry white toast…
Berkshires shares rose slightly on Thursday, partially reversing a 7% decline this month. Other investors may trust Ackmans judgment: Pershing Square has, after all, delivered his investors a 635% return since 2004 and nearly 50% this year alone. Still, Ackman wont get a chance to work on his activist investor chops with this particular stake: hes bought Class B shares in Berkshire that dont carry any voting rights.
The bigger picture: …the other wants four fried chickens and a Coke.
Activist investors were active elsewhere on Thursday: a famous early critic of Bernie Madoff accused industrial giant General Electric of widespread accounting fraud in the wake of its latest earnings report, sending its stock down 11%. The claims were even more extreme than those laid against the door of UK litigation finance firm Burford Capital last week which initially wiped out 65% of that companys market value.
Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.
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