Thursday, February 04, 2010

Buffet Gets Downgraded

Here's a 'man-bites-dog' if you've ever seen one. Berkshire gets a downgrade!

The rating actions are based on our view that Berkshire's overall capital adequacy, as well as that of its insurance operations, has weakened to levels no longer consistent with a 'AAA' rating and is not expected to return to extremely strong levels in the near term. Furthermore, we expect that the consolidated liquidity position of BRK will be reduced from extremely strong historical levels as a result of the acquisition. As capital adequacy and liquidity levels have declined, investment risk remains very high in our view, compounding the need for extremely strong capital and liquidity given potential investment volatility. A key concern is that BRK's risk tolerances appear to have increased, yet we believe they remain ill defined while the organization increases in complexity.

--S&P, explaining the downgrade from AAA to AA+

HT: ZeroHedge

1 comment:

Billiam said...

I guess the $$ he got from the Feds for hiw wind farm didn't help his books any.