Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett at the company's annual
shareholders meeting. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said he’s pursuing more opportunities in Asia after boosting reinsurance sales and expanding the Iscar Metalworking Cos. unit on the continent.
“Korea, Japan and you name it,” Buffett, 81, said May 5 at Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire’s annual meeting.
Buffett visited South Korea, Japan and India last year, and China in 2010. Berkshire owned almost 4 million shares of South Korean steelmaker Posco and a stake in Chinese carmaker BYD Co. (1211) as of Dec. 31, according to regulatory filings. Japan, rebounding from a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and Thailand, which suffered record floods last year, are among countries where Berkshire has increased sales.
The reinsurance unit has done “far more business in Asia” in recent months that it did a few years ago, he said at the meeting. Berkshire’s International Dairy Queen Inc. ice-cream unit, led by CEO John Gainor, recently opened its 500th store in China, where the Green Tea Blizzard dessert is the No. 1 seller. The subsidiary has more than 270 outlets in Thailand and expanded into Singapore last year.
China “is far and away our fastest-growing market,” Gainor said yesterday in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” program with Betty Liu.
Asia, a region with the world’s two-fastest-growing major economies, has become a focus for Berkshire as subsidiaries seek new markets. China’s gross domestic product expanded by 9.2 percent last year and India’s by 7.1 percent as U.S. GDP growth slowed to 1.7 percent from 3 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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