Berkshire Hathaway is a company that is involved in many different industries. They have holdings in many major companies and also have stockholdings in and own many subsidiaries. Their main focus is on the insurance and financial industries, though they do have holdings in many different industries such as utilities and energy businesses, manufacturing, service and retailing, as well as finance and financial products businesses. Their main company in the insurance industry is GEICO. Berkshire acquired GEICO in 1996 and today it is the core of the company’s other insurance operations .
As I mentioned before Berkshire has stockholdings in many different companies. Stockholdings are shares that a company may own in another company. As of September 2008 the company had stockholdings in over 40 major companies with millions of shares owned in each company.
Berkshire also has holdings as subsidiaries. A subsidiary is considered as an entity that is controlled by a bigger and more powerful entity. Their main subsidiary in the insurance industry is GIECO. GEICO itself is split into many different subsidiaries which Berkshire also controls such as Government Employees Insurance Company, GEICO General Insurance Company, GEICO Indemnity Company, and GEICO Casualty Company. Other insurance and financial subsidiaries include Duval, General Re and Wesco Financial group. Other subsidiaries that are wholly owned by Berkshire are Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom and Shaw Industries. In total Berkshire owns over 40 subsidiaries.
So far this year the company is doing extremely well. Despite the current economic crisis Berkshire continues to expand and has made many different major investments recently. In 2008 Berkshire bought over $8 Billion of shares in the Bank of America ...