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Six decades of disciplined capital deployment, on one filterable page.
Warren Buffett assumed operating control of Berkshire Hathaway on May 10, 1965. Every acquisition since — from a distressed New England textile mill to the largest privately owned railroad in North America — sits on the compounding curve that produced it. The complete public-equity book sits on the companion Berkshire Portfolio Ledger. This page catalogs the record: whole-company acquisitions, controlling stakes, and the marquee public-equity positions that have functioned as de-facto acquisitions of durable earning power. It is intentionally a living reference: as new deals close, the row is added, the roll-ups reflow, and the sitemap timestamp bumps. Nothing here is investment advice. Everything here is a fact-checkable practitioner reference for a very specific question — what does sixty years of Buffett-Munger capital allocation actually look like in list form?
For the public-equity book — Coca-Cola, Apple, American Express, Chubb, Chevron, Occidental, and the five Japanese trading houses — see the companion Berkshire Portfolio Ledger. For the closest architectural analog in continental Europe, see the LVMH acquisitions record and its maison-by-maison ledger. For the operating-compounder pattern — the "Toyota Production System meets M&A" archetype — see the Danaher acquisitions record and the companion Danaher Subsidiaries Ledger. For the software-native permanent-hold model, see the Constellation Software acquisitions record and portfolio-company ledger. For the Berkshire-adjacent 3G Capital co-sponsored consumer-goods vehicle where the 2013 Heinz deal sits, see the AB InBev acquisitions record. Practitioners modeling BNSF, See's, or GEICO-style intrinsic-value work use the Baratelli Financial Modeling Toolkit — the Wall-Street-standard DCF, LBO, WACC, and SOTP templates. For a full family-office CIO treatment of Berkshire's permanent-capital architecture, see the Family Office Guide.
Nine columns. Year of announcement or close. Target name. Sector at time of acquisition. Approximate consideration in USD (illustrative where deal size was not publicly disclosed — marked "n/d" for not-disclosed or "approx"). Deal structure. Counterparty type. The friendly-founder flag — the defining Berkshire acquisition pattern: was the seller a founder-operator who chose Berkshire specifically because Berkshire is where operators go to preserve what they built? Distinctive notes. Current status — held, divested, or merged into another Berkshire subsidiary.
Sort and filter. Click any column header to sort. Use the decade, sector, structure, counterparty, and friendly-founder filters to isolate a slice. The search box matches target names and notes.
What counts as an acquisition. This record includes whole-company purchases, controlling-stake purchases, and the marquee public-equity positions that Buffett has characterized in shareholder letters as effectively permanent ownership stakes (Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express, historically Wells Fargo and Washington Post). It does not attempt to enumerate every open-market equity trade — the 13F filings do that job. What appears here is the list a practitioner needs to see to understand how Berkshire built its earnings power.
Friendly-founder marker. A YES flag means the seller was a founder-operator or founding family who specifically chose Berkshire — typically because Berkshire promises operating autonomy, no financial engineering, and permanent capital. A NO flag means the transaction was a public-company sale, a distressed rescue, a government-adjacent deal (preferred stock in a financial crisis), a private-equity sale, or an open-market equity accumulation. Roughly two-thirds of Berkshire's whole-company acquisitions carry the friendly-founder marker — the pattern is not incidental to Berkshire's earnings power; it is Berkshire's earnings power.
Every major Berkshire acquisition since Warren Buffett assumed control in May 1965, on one page. Sortable by year, sector, deal size, structure, and counterparty type — with the friendly-founder pattern flagged across six decades. Search by target name (GEICO, See's Candies, BNSF, Precision Castparts, Van Tuyl, Pilot Flying J, Alleghany), by sector (insurance, railroads, energy, manufacturing), or by structure (whole-company, controlling stake, warrant, preferred). Every row is a fact-checkable reference. This is a living dataset — updated whenever Berkshire closes a new deal.
| Year | Target | Sector | Consideration | Structure | Counterparty | Friendly? | Notes | Status |
|---|
Roll-ups reflect the acquisitions cataloged in the table above. Where consideration is undisclosed, the deal is included in count-based roll-ups but excluded from dollar-based totals. Dollar figures are illustrative aggregates — the point is directional, not audit-grade.
Whole-company and controlling-stake purchases only; marquee public-equity positions excluded from the dollar totals to avoid mixing cost basis with market-value accumulations. Bar length is proportional within this table only.
Whole-company acquisitions dominate the deal count. Berkshire prefers to buy the whole thing when the founder wants to sell it.
Sector is captured at time of the transaction. Insurance, manufacturing, and services dominate; utilities and railroads are concentrated but large-dollar.
The signature Berkshire acquisition pattern. Roughly two-thirds of whole-company transactions carry the friendly-founder flag — the seller was a founder-operator who chose Berkshire because Berkshire is where operators go to preserve what they built.
An acquisition record is a lagging indicator. The leading indicator is the accumulation phase — the equity positions Berkshire is quietly building in the open market that may or may not graduate into a full whole-company acquisition. The pattern is well documented: GEICO 1976 built into GEICO 1996, Burlington Northern Santa Fe 2007 built into BNSF 2010, Pilot Flying J 2017 built into Pilot Flying J 2023. When Berkshire starts buying, it is worth watching where the position could go.
Berkshire holds preferred stock, warrants, and roughly 28%+ of common. Buffett has stated Berkshire will not take Occidental private but the stake continues to grow when the price is right. Occidental is now one of Berkshire's largest energy-adjacent bets alongside the utilities portfolio.
The Institute's practitioner read on Penske frames the stake as a candidate for future consolidation in Berkshire's automotive retail platform alongside Van Tuyl / Berkshire Hathaway Automotive. Open the Berkshire Automotive Ecosystem read →
Announced May 31, 2026 at ~$8.5 billion — the largest residential-construction deal in Berkshire's history and the largest US homebuilder acquisition by an operating-company acquirer on record. Berkshire Read Case 1. Open the flagship case →
Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo. Berkshire has publicly committed to hold and modestly grow these positions. Not a traditional "acquisition" but functionally a permanent stake in the Japanese industrial economy at scale.
Every acquisition on this page is a candidate for a full practitioner case memo. These are the memos that already exist — and where they connect to the acquisitions catalogued above.
Educational reference. Not investment advice. Not a solicitation. Not affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. The Baratelli Institute publishes under the Lowe v. SEC publisher exception; neutral positioning maintained throughout. Deal figures cited in this catalog are sourced primarily to Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and shareholder letters, S&P and Moody's rating actions, contemporaneous press coverage (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters), and standard reference works on Berkshire's history. Dollar amounts are approximate. Where a specific transaction date or dollar figure is not publicly disclosed, the row is flagged with "approx" or "n/d" (not disclosed) in the notes column rather than fabricating precision.
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“Our favorite holding period is forever. Our second-favorite is until the founder wants to sell.”
