Hathaway

A Berkshire Hathaway Inc. unit agreed Wednesday to buy Las Vegas utility NV Energy Inc. in a deal that values the company at about $5.59 billion with an enterprise value of close to $10 billion.

Following the resignation of Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Warren Buffett’s chief lieutenant, David Sokol, the leadership at MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. has appointed CEO Greg Abel chairman. Buffett said the conglomerate had been very successful in recent years in large part because of Sokol, calling his accomplishments “extraordinary,” and adding that Sokol and Abel “delivered the best performance of any managers in the public utility field.” Buffett stirred up Wall Street after the markets had closed Wednesday with the announcement that Sokol had submitted his resignation to strengthen his family’s financial resources. Buffett accepted the resignation, although twice in the past few years he and the Berkshire board had talked Sokol out of resigning. The resignation followed Berkshire’s March 13 announcement that it was buying specialty chemicals firm Lubrizol on the recommendation of Sokol, who purchased nearly 100,000 shares of the company for about $10 million earlier this year. Buffett said he learned about Sokol’s stock purchase March 19. While the stock purchase raised eyebrows on Wall Street, Sokol maintained that he had done nothing wrong regarding the Lubrizol acquisition — but told CNBC that if he had it to do over again, he would do things a bit differently. According to Buffett, before he overcame his skepticism and embraced the Lubrizol deal, he was leaning toward an acquisition by MidAmerican, which includes MidAmerican Energy Co., Kern River Gas Transmission Co., Northern Natural Gas, PacifiCorp, CE Electric UK and CalEnergy Generation.

With its acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings working its way through the regulatory process and plans to divest itself of its upstream gas assets and international coal and freight businesses already announced, Constellation Energy said Thursday it also intends to sell its Houston-based downstream gas trading operations.

With its acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings working its way through the regulatory process and plans to divest itself of its upstream gas assets and international coal and freight businesses already announced, Constellation Energy said Thursday it also intends to sell its Houston-based downstream gas trading operations.

Two weeks after its sponsor, Constellation Energy Group, fell on hard times and agreed to be acquired by Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings, Constellation Energy Partners LLC (CEP) has put itself on the “for sale” block.

Constellation Energy Group is facing a wave of lawsuits from shareholders who are seeking to block the company’s $4.7 billion buyout by Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. and who claim that Constellation Energy inflated its financial results and intentionally mislead investors.

Coming off 2005 utility results in which net earnings tripled to more than half-a-billion-dollars, Berkshire Hathaway’s growth-hungry MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. is looking at a two-fold jump in its electric utility customer base to more than 2.4 million, revenues of more than $3 billion and a total portfolio of utility energy assets exceeding $14 billion. These are the numbers Berkshire’s billionaire founder and CEO Warren Buffett spelled out in a letter to shareholders posted on the parent conglomerate’s website earlier this month.

A group led by Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. said Thursday it withdrew its application with the state of Alaska to build a $6.3 billion Alaska portion of a pipeline to deliver North Slope natural gas to the Lower 48 states. The news was the latest blow to the more than 30-year effort to build a long-line Alaska gas transportation system.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BHI) has $15 billion burning a hole in its pocket to invest in the energy industry and there is $100 billion of other investors’ money “waiting on the sidelines” to see if Congress passes a broad energy bill this year that repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), MidAmerican Energy’s David Sokol told a natural gas strategy conference in Denver last week.