Berkshire After Buffett | Tech Moves From Exception to Allocation
What the Bending Spoons and Alphabet purchases say about the new allocation regime at Greg Abel’s Berkshire Hathaway
The old Berkshire did own tech, but as exceptions. IBM (2011), BYD (2008), Apple (2016) and the lieutenant-led Amazon and Snowflake positions were each bought on a specific rationale, usually at a modest multiple. None reflected a sector view. Under Abel, tech has become an allocation. In nine months Berkshire has built Alphabet into a top-three holding, ended a 14-quarter streak of net selling, and now owns ~4% of Bending Spoons at roughly 10x forward EV/sales. The more novel shift is how Berkshire buys. Both headline tech moves were primary capital: a $10B Alphabet placement and a Bending Spoons IPO allocation plus a $33 private placement. Berkshire is acting as anchor capital, not just as a buyer in the market. “Value” is being redefined rather than abandoned. Bending Spoons is a growth multiple on a value process. Berkshire is backing a capital allocator that does in software what Berkshire did in industrials.
#BerkshireHathaway, #GregAbel, #BendingSpoons, #Alphabet, #CapitalAllocation, #ValueInvesting, #AIStack, #SoftwareRollUps, #CapitalInsights
The Creditor Wars | The Six-Stage Lifecycle of a Leveraged Asset | What Neiman Marcus Teaches Allocators About Leverage
Neiman Marcus has now been through two leveraged buyouts, a creditor-led reorganisation, a merger financed with secured bonds, a coercive debt exchange and a second Chapter 11 — all in twenty-one years. Read as a morality tale, it is about private equity. Read as a capital struc‐ ture, it is about something more useful: a repeatable sequence that determines who gets paid, and when.
For sovereign funds and family offices the practical issue is that a single portfolio typically sits on several sides of the same capital structure: buyout equity through PE commitments, senior loans through private credit or CLO equity, and the eventual fulcrum through special-situations funds. Returns in this cycle ac‐ crue to whoever can act at stage four. The broader point for portfolio construction: the leveraged-finance system has shifted value from passive, par-buying capital toward active capital that can organise and fund. An allocator who is structurally passive in the credit sleeve should expect to be on the paying side of stage four, and price that into the spread they accept.
#CreditorWars, #NeimanMarcus, #LiabilityManagement, #LeveragedFinance, #DistressedDebt, #PrivateCredit, #PrivateEquity, #CapitalStructure, #Allocators
From Washington to Your Wallet | Why the Bond Market Touches Everyone — & Who Really Lends America the Money
Why This Matters Even If You Never Buy a Bond You do not need to own a single bond for any of this to shape your life. It reaches you through the mortgage or loan you are already paying, through the company you work for — which borrows at these same rates to grow and to hire — through the value of your currency and the price of anything imported, and through the taxes that fund the world around you. The bond market is the quiet tide beneath all of it. None of this is a crisis today. But it is a slow change in the ground rules, and the patches applied so far have not altered it. The next real test comes in early November, when the Treasury decides how much long-term debt to sell — the first clear sign of whether improvisation is turning into strategy. That is why we keep tracking a story that looks, at first glance, like it belongs only to Washington. It doesn't. It ends up much closer to home.
#BondMarket, #USDebt, #Treasury, #PersonalFinance, #GlobalEconomy, #Explainer
The Hub Contest | Hong Kong, Singapore,& the Convergence on Zero-Tax Carry
Both centres have now legislated near-identical exemptions on performance income. Once tax is commoditised, the contest for asset management moves to the levers that actually differentiate — capital access, talent mobility, and the shape of each hub's flow.
#AssetManagement, #HongKong, #Singapore, #CarriedInterest, #HedgeFunds, #FamilyOffices, #MAS, #HKEX, #CapitalMarkets, #MultipolarOrder, #DistributionReset