As of the end of the third quarter, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had the cash pile of $40 billion. As Bloomberg reports, citing market participants, it may become a serious problem for Buffett, because his prime income comes from investments in stocks, which bring bigger profit than currencies. The high current balance of Berkshire Hathaway means the fund piles money up faster than makes investments. At the end of the first quarter, there were $49.1 billion on the Berkshire Hathaway accounts. In the next quarter, this figure reduced to $35.7 billion after the purchase of Heinz, one of the world’s leaders in producing ketchup and other sauces. The third quarter data has not been released yet, and the analysts, polled by Bloomberg, foresee that the Berkshire Hathaway current balance would show significant advance. First of all, a net income is forecast to be $4.3 billion. Moreover, Mars is going to pay off $4.4 billion to Buffett.
In the middle of October, the investor said that the company's cash balance was about $40 billion. At the same time, he emphasized that too much cash is not a reason to put that money to work as soon as possible.
Buffett keeps saying that a cash balance of above $20 billion is comfortable for him. The investor has always favored a size of the current balance which is enough to minimize losses during a period of crisis.
Earlier, the U.S. mass media paid great attention to Apple’s large cash balance. As of fall 2013, it has piled $147 billion, or 10 percent of all funds operated by non-financial organizations of the USA.
