Strong investor demand allowed the company to tighten yields on the offering. The longest part of the sale was $2.5 billion of 3.125 percent of 10-year bonds offering yielding 1.3 percentage points more than similar-maturity Treasuries, according to Bloomberg data.Investor orders for Berkshire Hathaway bond sale hit $34bn (LINK)
Investor orders for a piece of a $9bn Berkshire Hathaway bond sale eclipsed $30bn on Tuesday, as the conglomerate headed by Warren Buffett sought to repay bank loans used to finance its $36bn takeover of Precision Castparts.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy Valuation Indicators (LINK)The deal, spread across seven tranches, underscored the accessibility to the market that high-grade companies have enjoyed over the past several weeks, and stands in sharp contrast to the experience of junk-rated groups which have struggled under heightened volatility and erratic fund flows.
Comments on Mistakes and Buffett’s Original Berkshire Purchase (LINK)
Latticework of Mental Models: Network Effect (LINK)
Gary Channon: the three things I look for when buying a company (LINK)
Bruce Berkowitz on Fannie and Freddie: People are going to call this 'The Big Lie' [H/T Linc] (LINK)
Being punished for doing the obvious: Peabody Energy Corp edition - by John Hempton (LINK)
Tim Harford: The lost leisure time of our lives (LINK)
Three hours a day is quite enough,” wrote John Maynard Keynes in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. The essay continues to tantalise its readers today, thanks in part to a forecast that is looking magnificently right — that in advanced economies people could be up to eight times better off in 2030 than in 1930 — coupled with a forecast that is looking spectacularly wrong, that we would be working 15-hour weeks.
Bitcoin and Diversity - by Ben Thompson (LINK)In 2008, economists Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga edited a book in which celebrated economists pondered Keynes’s essay. One contributor, Benjamin Friedman of Harvard University, has recently revisited the question of what Keynes got wrong, and produced a thought-provoking answer.
a16z Podcast: Disruption in Business… and Life (with Marc Andreessen and Clayton Christensen) (LINK)
a16z Podcast: Data Network Effects (LINK)
CRISPR: gene editing is just the beginning (LINK)
Yellowstone's Supervolcano Gets a Lid (LINK)
Book of the day: Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future