Shanghai Daily: Business - shanghaidaily.com
BILLIONAIRE Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc will pay US$4.5 billion for 60 percent of Marmon Holdings Inc, adding another family-run company that prospered without shareholder demands for short-term profits. Chicago's Pritzker family, which controls Global Hyatt Corp, built Marmon into a group with US$7 billion in annual sales and 125 units, including operations that serve the railroad and energy industries. Operating income more than tripled from 2002 to 2007, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said in a statement on Tuesday. Marmon has "businesses that are fairly niche-oriented where they have dominant positions established over time," said Thomas Russo, who manages about US$3.5 billion at Gardner Russo & Gardner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and counts Berkshire as its largest holding. "They have a history under the Pritzkers of being liberated from the quarterly earnings game." Buffett, 77, built Berkshire over four decades, buying out-of-favor stocks