Under the Local Government Act 1888, Berkshire County Council took over functions of the Berkshire Quarter Sessions, covering the administrative county of Berkshire, which excluded the county borough of Reading. Much of the county’s early history is recorded in the Chronicles of the Abingdon Abbey, which at the time of the survey was second only to the crown in the extent and number of its possessions, such as The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay. This wood, perhaps no longer extant, was west of Frilsham, near Newbury. The county has been the site of several battles, particularly during the First English Civil War, when Reading and Wallingford were besieged two battles took place at Newbury, in 1643 and 1644. The Thames then forms Berkshire’s northern border, flowing past Maidenhead, before entering the county and flowing past Slough and Windsor.
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Two main tributaries skirt past Reading, the Loddon and its sub-tributary the Blackwater draining parts of two counties south, and the Kennet draining part of upland Wiltshire in the west. Reading became the new county town in 1867, taking over from Abingdon, which remained in the county. Software development and high-tech industry dominate the economy in the east, but the west remains an agricultural region. The Berkshire Downs, a chalk downland and area of outstanding natural beauty, occupy the west of the county. The historic county included the parts of Oxfordshire south of the River Thames, which formed its northern border, but excluded Caversham and Slough. Despite investments in renewable energy, the company was criticized for its decision to operate these plants until at least 2049, raising public health and environmental concerns.
Annual letters and shareholders’ meetings
- In 2018, the company put Ajit Jain in charge of all of the insurance operations and made Greg Abel the manager of all other (noninsurance) operations.
- A flag for the historic county of Berkshire was registered with the Flag Institute in 2017.
- The administrative county’s full legal name was “Berks” rather than “Berkshire” until 1967, when the government changed the name to Berkshire at the county council’s request.
In January 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit against Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, alleging the company steered borrowers into unaffordable loans. Abel was appointed vice chairman for non-insurance business operations, and Jain became vice chairman of insurance operations. Charlie Munger served as vice chairman of the company from 1978 until his death on November 28, 2023. Berkshire’s annual shareholders’ meetings, nicknamed “Woodstock for Capitalists”, take place at the CHI Health Center Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska.
Horse racing
They are the source of the River Kennet, which flows east through Newbury before meeting the Thames at Reading. The county has an area of 1,263 km2 (488 sq mi) and a population of 911,403. Berkshire (/ˈbɑːrkʃɪər, -ʃər/ ⓘ BARK-sheer, -shər; abbreviated Berks.), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a ceremonial county in South East England.
Warren Buffett’s Letters To Shareholders
After the Thames broke through the Goring Gap that river and its tributaries the Loddon, Emm Brook, Blackwater and (to some extent) Wey shaped the geography of eastern Berkshire but have not yet eroded away its Eocene cover. The early Eocene London Clay (Thames Group) generally gets thinner as we proceed westwards, though the thickness of beds can vary considerably over short distances. In Berkshire, White Chalk Formation beds tend to be shallower than those further west (Wiltshire) or those in the Chilterns, and often contain layers of chalk rock. To the south, the land crests along the boundary with Hampshire; the highest parts of South-East and Eastern England taken together are here.
Financials
- As of the end of 2024, the company had only 27 employees at that corporate headquarters.
- The insurance company Prudential has an administration centre in the town.
- Software development and high-tech industry dominate the economy in the east, but the west remains an agricultural region.
- In October 2025, Berkshire acquired OxyChem, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, in a $9.7 billion cash deal.
In 2017, Berkshire was the largest shareholder in United Airlines and Delta Air Lines and a top 3 shareholder in Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. While Buffett generally does not invest in tech stocks, he has said that Apple is a consumer products company and that he understands consumer products businesses. Aggressive stock purchases continued and by March 31, 2017, Berkshire had amassed a stake of 129 million shares (2.5% of Apple). In 2013, Berkshire owned 1.74 million shares of Gannett; however, it sold its shares in the second quarter of 2013. Alongside the preferred stock investment, Berkshire obtained warrants allowing Berkshire to buy 700 million common shares at $7.14 per share, which were exercised.
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The global headquarters of Reckitt Benckiser and the UK headquarters of Mars, Incorporated are based in Slough. The financial company ING Direct has its headquarters in Reading, as does the directories company Hibu. These companies have been swallowed by other groups, but their descendants, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard respectively, still have local operations. Reading has a historical involvement in the information technology industry, largely as a result of the early presence in the town of sites of International Computers Limited and Digital.
Helzberg Diamonds, a chain of jewelry stores based in Kansas City that began in 1915, was acquired by Berkshire in 1995 after a chance run in between Buffett and Barnett Helzberg on a street in New York City. In May 2000, Berkshire acquired Ben Bridge Jeweler, a chain of jewelry stores established in 1912 with locations primarily in the western United States. The company has acquired several residential real estate brokerages including Long & Foster, acquired in September 2017. In 2005, it acquired PacifiCorp for $5.1 billion in cash, and assumed $4.3 billion in PacificCorp debt and preferred stock. At the time of purchase, Berkshire’s voting interest was limited to 10% of the company’s shares, but this restriction ended when the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 was repealed in 2005.
Understanding Berkshire Hathaway: Market Cap, Ownership, and More
In Compton, a small village, roughly 10 miles from Newbury, a chemical manufacturing company called Carbosynth was founded, in 2006. Before moving to their £129 million headquarters berkshire hathaway letters to shareholders in the outskirts of the town in 2002, Vodafone used 64 buildings spread across the town centre. Manufacturing ceased in 2018 with operations moving elsewhere, however the UK headquarters is still based there. The town is home to the National Foundation for Educational Research, which is housed in The Mere.
Berkshire formed BH Media Group with a purchase of the Omaha World-Herald in December 2011, which included six other daily newspapers and several weeklies across Nebraska and southwest Iowa. Instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett bought more of the stock at an even higher price to take control of the company and fire Stanton; Stanton and his son resigned in 1965. In 1964, Buffett offered to sell his shares back to the company for $11.50 each. Buffett personally owns 38.4% of the Class A voting shares of Berkshire Hathaway, representing a 15.1% overall economic interest in the company. A “file MD5” is a hash that gets computed from the file contents, and is reasonably unique based on that content.
In 2020, Buffett said he overpaid for the company and wrote down its value by approximately $10 billion. In January 2016, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Precision Castparts Corp. for $32.1 billion. In 2016, it was the fifth-largest auto dealership group, with ownership of 81 dealerships and revenues of $8 billion. On October 2, 2014, Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, an auto dealership subsidiary, was created through the acquisition of Van Tuyl Group, the largest auto dealer in the nation that was still independently owned up to that date. In March 2011, Berkshire Hathaway made its first foray into the Indian insurance sector with its non-direct subsidiary BerkshireInsurance.com. In September 2011, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Lubrizol for $9 billion in cash.
Who Is Warren Buffett?
Berkshire Hathaway sold its stake in Ulta Beauty in the fourth quarter of 2024, just two quarters after acquiring the shares. In the third quarter of 2022, Berkshire bought 60 million shares in TSMC valued at $4.1 billion; the shares were sold in late 2022 and 2023 in part due to geopolitical tensions. However, at an annual meeting on May 4, 2024, Buffett stated that he had sold all of his shares in Paramount at a substantial loss, blaming himself for deciding to invest. In the second quarter of 2020, Berkshire added a position of more than 20 million shares in Barrick Gold; the shares were sold in 2021. In June 2017, Berkshire acquired a 38.4% stake in Home Capital Group for $400 million, giving a lifeline to the Toronto-based embattled mortgage lender. In April 2020, Berkshire sold all shares in the airlines due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial air transport.
Berkshire also received warrants to buy 43.5 million shares with at $115 per share, which were exercisable at any time for a five-year term. The preferred stock yielded an annual interest rate of 10%, earning Berkshire $500 million in interest income per year. In September 2008, at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, Berkshire invested $5 billion in preferred stock in Goldman Sachs to provide it with a source of funding when capital markets had become constrained. That year, ConocoPhillips completed the corporate spin-off of Phillips 66, of which Berkshire owned 27 million shares. In early 2008, Berkshire increased its stake in ConocoPhillips to 85 million shares. Berkshire made its first investment in Tesco in 2006, and in 2012 it raised this stake to over 5% of the company, investing a total of $2.3 billion.
Ice hockey
In the third quarter of 2020, the company agreed to buy Dominion Energy’s natural gas transmission and storage operations. By April 2023, Berkshire increased its stake in each of those companies to 7.4%. Berkshire began investing in common shares of Occidental beginning in 2022 and has increased its position since. In 2019, by buying warrants and preferred stock, Berkshire provided $10 billion in financing to Occidental Petroleum as part of its acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum. Buffett himself has described this as a “call on the industry” rather than a choice in an individual company. Buffett had made an investment in US Airways in 1989 which, although he sold for a profit, almost lost Berkshire a substantial sum of money.
Newbury is home to the world headquarters of the mobile network operator Vodafone, which is the town’s largest employer with over 6,000 people. The European head offices of major IT companies BlackBerry, CA Technologies, are in the town. The heaths and woodland south and east of Bracknell are mostly covered by (Eocene) Bracklesham Group sands and clays, and Quaternary sands, silts and gravels.
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