Think this way: Buffett uses $11b cash to get $22.6b of cash and investments.
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And the liabilities are…?
Of course there are liabilities, that’s not the point.
The point is that Berkshire has a troubling ‘problem’ of having $145b in cash, probably $155b by now, almost a full trimester after the last report, all of it earning next to no interest. With this acquistion, he gets to use of a small amount ($11b) of that cash, but now he has another $23b worth of assets (in addition to a bunch of liabilities, of course) that he has to invest.
It is not Buffett’s style to hang on to assets acquired by previous owners (remember the immediate sale of Lou Simpson’s GEICO securities, for instance, and the lengthy disposal of the Gen Re derivative positions), so now Buffett is likely to sell most of the acquired assets, and will have another $23b to invest, on top of the $155b, less the $11b tagged for this acquisition.
The point being, this does not really solve Buffett’s problem of what to buy with Berkshire’s mountain of cash. Not that I’m complaining - I’m pretty confident that Buffett will get an opportunity to deploy that cash at much better rates, if only by buying much higher yield bonds in the next few months and years.
dtb