The post Even Warren Buffett agrees his Berkshire Hathaway takeover was a costly early mistake appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The legendary Warren Buffett enters his final week running Berkshire Hathaway with a clean admission. He says the deal that built the company was also the worst move he ever made. Warren ran the company for six decades. He turned a broken textile business into a group worth more than $1 trillion. Still, he calls the purchase a mistake that cost him hundreds of billions of dollars. That claim sounds wild on paper, since the company made Warren rich, and his Class A shares make up most of his $151 billion fortune. That puts him at No. 10 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. If he kept the B shares he started donating in 2006, now worth $208 billion, his wealth would sit near $359 billion, placing him at No. 22 instead. A cheap textile stock turns into a personal standoff Warren traced the error back to 1962. At the time, he ran a small partnership worth about $7 million. People would call it a hedge fund today. He spotted Berkshire Hathaway as a cheap stock based on working capital. The business itself was a dying textile company. Mills kept closing. Each closure funded stock buybacks. He planned to buy shares, tender them back, and take a small win. By 1964, he owned a large stake. Warren met CEO Seabury Stanton, who asked what price he wanted in a tender offer. He said $11.50 and gave his word. Weeks later, the offer arrived at $11.375. He felt cheated by one-eighth of a dollar. He refused to sell. He bought more shares. He took control. Stanton lost his job. Warren later said the move locked serious money into a terrible business. Berkshire became the base for everything that followed. In 1967, he used it to buy a strong insurance company. He later…

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Filed under: News - @ December 25, 2025 4:22 pm