Buffett says Berkshire “not aggressive” with SPACs on offers By Reuters

By John McCrank

(Reuters) – Warren Buffett on Saturday in contrast the shopping for frenzy by particular goal acquisition firms, or SPACs, to playing with different folks’s cash and stated their exercise has made it robust for his firm, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:) Inc, to compete on offers.

Berkshire Hathaway has $70 billion to $80 billion it could “like to put to work,” however has not been capable of beneath the present situations, Chairman and Chief Government Officer Buffett stated.

“It is a killer. The SPACs typically need to spend their cash in two years, as I perceive it. When you put a gun to my head and stated you need to purchase an enormous enterprise in two years, I’d purchase one, however it wouldn’t be a lot of 1. We glance and look,” Buffett stated at Berkshire’s annual assembly.

SPACs are listed shell firms that increase funds to accumulate non-public firms and take them public, permitting targets to sidestep the extra onerous regulatory checks of an preliminary public providing.

Greater than $100 billion has been raised by U.S. SPACs, also called blank-check firms, to this point this 12 months, whereas the worth of SPAC mergers and acquisitions hit a report $263 billion, based on information from Dealogic.

“It is a completely different equation that you’ve got in the event you’re working with different folks’s cash the place you get the upside, and you need to give it again to them in the event you do not do one thing, and albeit, we aren’t aggressive with that,” he stated.

There are firms which are keen on being acquired by Berkshire, however it could be tough for them to take action as a result of a SPAC bidder would counter with a better provide, Buffett stated.

“That will not go on eternally, however it’s the place the cash is now,” he stated.