October 2015 – Page 3

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Marmon Holdings, Inc., a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, has acquired substantially all of GE Railcar Services’ owned fleet of railroad tank cars as of September 30, 2015.

Approximately 25,000 full-service and net-leased tank cars are covered by the transaction.

Expanding UTLX

Marmon already owns tank car manufacturer UTLX, which manufactures tank cars and engages in full-service leasing. UTLX furnishes all the services that are normally the responsibility of an owner and backs those services with the necessary specialists to keep fleet records of maintenance, repairs, and other administrative details.

In addition, Marmon also agreed to acquire certain GE Railcar Repair Services’ repair and maintenance facilities by the end of 2015.

The price of the acquisition was roughly $1 billion.

GE is selling its remaining railcar leasing business, General Electric Railcar Services LLC, to Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC)

“We’re pleased to sell our railcar business and, separately, our tank car fleet and railcar repair shops, to buyers that are long-term players in the industry committed to expanding the businesses,” said Keith Sherin, GE Capital chairman and CEO.

The sale of the remaining railcar leasing business to Wells Fargo is subject to customary regulatory and other approvals and is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2016.

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Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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For the past four months, Berkshire Hathaway’s leadership has been expressing its displeasure with the state of the reinsurance market. Now, reinsurer Munich Re has reported that Berkshire has cut its stake in the company from roughly 12% down to 9%.

“It’s a business whose prospects have turned for the worse and there’s not much we can do about it,” Warren Buffett said at the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.

“The reinsurance business not as good as it once was and is unlikely to get better,” Charlie Munger added. “Money has come in, not because they want to be in reinsurance, but because it’s an uncorrelated asset class. We’re in it for the long haul.”

Buffett’s and Munger’s words were in line with those of Ajit Jain, who is the head of Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance.

“What was a very lucrative business is no longer a very lucrative business going forward,” Jain said in July in The Wall Street Journal.

Berkshire originally disclosed a stake in Munich Re in January 2010, when it reported a 3.045% stake in the German reinsurer.