Serious interest
Although likely not enough to offset the rising cost of living, you may have noticed a few extra dollars in your savings account each month, as interest rate rises begin to trickle through to higher savings.
Warren Buffett certainly has noticed: his sprawling conglomerate, Berkshire Hathway, is sitting on a cool $157 billion of cash and cash equivalents, the highest figure ever recorded by the company. In the days of near-zero interest rates, that didn’t mean much — but, in the most recent quarter, that cash pile bolstered income by $1.7 billion, with most of this being lent to the US government via short-term treasuries.
Saving up for something good
Berkshire is America’s seventh-largest company; an expansive industrial giant with businesses in insurance, railways, energy, manufacturing, retailing… and an enormous portfolio of investments in companies including Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, and more.
Still led by the dynamic duo of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, who are 93 and 99 years old, respectively, modern Berkshire remains an outlier in corporate America — an empire built through prudent dealmaking and investing over more than 60 years. At the moment, Buffett and Munger seem content to do something that’s often hard for prolific dealmakers: sit tight, keep their financial powder dry, and wait for an opportunity.
