Berkshire Hathaway history

Westward-bound Mormons spent the winter of 1846–47 there at an encampment that they named Winter Quarters, later called Florence, which was subsequently annexed by Omaha.

Founded in 1854, it soon became known as a “gateway to the West.” Omaha’s location near the juncture of the Platte and Missouri rivers provides access to the wide, flat valley of the Platte, which has become a vital transportation artery.

Omaha, city, seat (1855) of Douglas county, eastern Nebraska, United States It is situated on the west bank of the Missouri River opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Incorporated as a city in 1857, Omaha had 1,883 residents by the eve of the American Civil War.

Although Omaha lost its capital status to Lincoln after Nebraska entered the union in 1867, during the next two decades more railroads were built through the city.

Abraham Lincoln essentially designated Omaha–Council Bluffs the eastern terminus of the first transcontinental railroad, which, when completed in 1869, placed Omaha at the eastern end of the country’s first rail link to the West and enhanced its stature as an emerging urban centre.

The bridging of the Missouri River in 1872 helped integrate Omaha–Council Bluffs into a national rail network.

The establishment of the Union Stock Yards in 1884 soon brought major meat packers to the suburban community of South Omaha, linking the urban area to a vast rural hinterland.

1888: Hathaway Manufacturing Company incorporates in Massachusetts.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. began as a textile company, incorporated as Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts in 1889.

Moreover, in August 1898 an Indian congress—uniting hundreds of Native Americans from more than 30 tribes—was also held in Omaha.

During 1915–17 several suburban communities, including South Omaha, were annexed.

In 1929 several other New England textile manufacturers with much common ownership--Valley Falls Company, Coventry Company, Greylock Mills, and Fort Dummer Mills--merged into the company, which was then renamed Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates.

In fact, Omaha surpassed Chicago as the world’s top livestock market in 1955.

Berkshire Hathaway closed its extensive operations in Adams, Massachusetts, in 1958, and the same year sold its curtain plant in Warren, Rhode Island, to Pilgrim Curtain Company.

In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway after noticing a pattern in the price direction of its stock whenever the company closed a mill.

Sold my Geico and American Express holdings prematurely, but sported one of the first beards on Wall Street in 1964.

An investment group led by Buffett took full control of the company in 1965.

Buffett initially maintained Berkshire's core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry and other investments.

1968: Company acquires Sun Newspapers, a group of Omaha-area weeklies.

Buffett, who became Berkshire's chairman in 1969, tended to acquire companies whose management and products he liked, rather than buying companies with the intention of making major changes.

Back in 1973 Buffett warned that Bershire Hathaway's sheer bulk would prohibit it from continuing to grow at rates of 15 to 20 percent a year.

A federal court ruling that de facto racial segregation prevailed in the Omaha Public Schools led to the busing of students away from neighbourhood schools beginning in 1976 as a means of achieving integration.

Berkshire formed another insurance company, Continental Divide Insurance Company, in 1978.

Even with Warren Buffett's growing reputation, not every company was eager to become part of Berkshire; CSE Corporation, the holding company for Civil Service Employees Insurance Company, turned down an informal takeover offer in 1979.

The next year, 1982, Berkshire instituted an unusual corporate philanthropy program that won praise from shareholders by allowing them to direct a portion of the company's charitable contributions.

Buffett had been known to promote it during annual shareholder meetings, often running buses to the store (a practice continued to this day). Also in 1983, another insurance company, National Indemnity Company of Florida, was formed and added to the National Indemnity group.

Also during 1985, Berkshire reached an agreement with Fireman's Fund Insurance Company which allowed it a 7 percent participation in Fireman's business.

Another major event of 1988 was the listing of Berkshire's stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Although the stock had previously traded in the over-the-counter market, the move was designed to reduce transaction costs for shareholders.

The recapitalization was done in part, Buffett explained in the 1995 annual report, to discourage brokers from marketing unit trusts and seducing clients with the Berkshire name.

With the GEICO deal completed in January 1996, Berkshire Hathaway's insurance segment mushroomed in both float and potential earnings, becoming more stalwart as the company's core segment.

His insistence on holding a stock for the long term was seen by some as stubborn and misguided when shoppingmode Coca-Cola stock hit a high of $87 a share in 1998.

The stockyards closed in 1999, but meatpacking remained a significant part of the local economy; the steak survived as an Omaha icon, and the city remained a food-processing innovator.

Buffett was, in large part, vindicated in 2000 as the high-tech bubble burst.

Just before the end of the year, Berkshire purchased Benjamin Moore Paint for $1 billion cash and building products manufacturer Johns Manville Corporation for about $1.8 billion, although both deals were not completed until early 2001.

In 2010, Buffett claimed that purchasing Berkshire Hathaway was the biggest investment mistake he had ever made, and claimed that it had denied him compounded investment returns of about $200 billion over the subsequent 45 years.