NEW YORK: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company briefly crossed $1 trillion in market value Wednesday, making it the first non-tech firm on Wall Street to cross the milestone.
Buffett, who turns 94 on Friday, has been chair of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970, transforming it from a small textile company into one of the world’s most valuable firms, and turning him into one of the world’s richest men.
On Wednesday, Berkshire Hathaway’s market capitalization briefly crossed $1 trillion in early trading, putting it in an exclusive club alongside tech titans like Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft.
It is the only publicly-traded non-tech firm other than Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco to hit such heady heights. Berkshire Hathaway’s shares were up around 0.9 percent at 12:15 pm local time in New York (1615 GMT), valuing it at just under $995 billion.
The Nebraska-based firm’s portfolio spans a vast array of sectors, including insurance, railroads, and retail. Buffett, who has been dubbed the “Sage of Omaha,” popularized a dispassionate, long-term approach to investing that ran counter to the short-term thinking of many market players at the time.
Buffett has been in a selling mood of late, convincing Berkshire Hathaway to dump large quantities of stock in some of its biggest holdings, including Apple and Bank of America, and accumulating vast cash reserves. The firm has plowed its growing cash pile into government bonds to such an extent that it now owns more short-term US Treasury bills than the Federal Reserve.
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