Wow BNSF bought out $34B

he doesn't fully own the company, he only owns 77.4 percent. however this does make him majority stockholders and his vote will outcast anyone else's.
It will be interesting to see what exactly he does with the company. I hear hes a proponent of heritage units like SD40-2's and stuff like that .

I also agree about returning it to Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad vs the just BNSF now. A way to return the gratitude to the 2 railroads that formed it.

Jimmyp4 said:

he doesn't fully own the company, he only owns 77.4 percent. however this does make him majority stockholders and his vote will outcast anyone else's.

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Actually this is incorrect. He needs 60% of the non Berkshire owned BNSF shareholders to approve the takeover. If and when he gets that approval the remaining shareholders are forced to sell their shares or take shares in Berkshire as a trade. Once that happens BNSF will be delisted from the stock exchange and no-one will be able to purchase shares in BNSF only in the parent company. This is much the same as what most car companies have done with their subsidiaries such as Ford with Lincoln and Mercury or Chrysler with Jeep or GM with Chevrolet and Opel.

Regards

Phil

Anyways, I can only see this event be a positive attribute to BNSF. He wouldn't have invested that much money into a company if he didn't believe in them.

phil C i am with you. i see either him doing one of two things. either running this railroad into the ground or (the more likely) turning it into a slimmed down version in every way. track maintenence will suffer, employees will suffer, and therefore the ecomony will suffer. im just curious though, this railroad along with pretty much every other major class 1 negotiates with the NCCC during negotiations with labor. if BNSF becomes a wholly owned subsidary, does this alleviate them from the NCCC? if so, that would basically pit the employees of the railroad against the richest man in the world. so many uncertainties, and for that reason i hope it falls through. just my 2 cents.

i see either him doing one of two things. either running this railroad into the ground or (the more likely) turning it into a slimmed down version in every way. track maintenence will suffer, employees will suffer, and therefore the ecomony will suffer.

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Seems rather clear you guys know absolutely nothing about Warren Buffet.

gfisher said:

Seems rather clear you guys know absolutely nothing about Warren Buffet.

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I don't know if your comments were directed to me but I will put a couple of things straight. Firstly I doubt that Warren's takeover will be bad for BNSF. I assume it will remain unchanged as far as name, logo etc are concerned. What I don't like is the delisting of the company from the stock exchange and the removal of access to this fine company.
BNSF did not need to be taken over to survive. It could've and would've continued on its own without any intervention.

Regards

Phil

Not aimed at you, Phil.

Phil_C said:

I don't know if your comments were directed to me but I will put a couple of things straight. Firstly I doubt that Warren's takeover will be bad for BNSF. I assume it will remain unchanged as far as name, logo etc are concerned. What I don't like is the delisting of the company from the stock exchange and the removal of access to this fine company.
BNSF did not need to be taken over to survive. It could've and would've continued on its own without any intervention.

Regards

Phil

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This is true, BNSF in of itself wasn't doing entirely that bad. Every other railroad in the United States & Canada are doing very poor due to the economy. Union Pacific most notably, has high lay-off numbers, far more so then BNSF I think. I'm really not too entirely sure, but I can't imagine that they are doing the greatest either, same for CP&CN.

What we see here is a man who has invested tons of money into a company that he sees as being very profitable, and believes in the company. If he didn't think about BNSF that way, why wouldn't he buy out UP or CSX? Maybe I'm just missing something here but if I understand correctly, you don't just go throwing some 30 billion dollars into something and then crash it. Not that he can crash it himself, but you guys catch my drift.

For those of you who are wanting to go into the railroading industry, go for it. No one will hold you back. Right now isn't the greatest. Hiring is almost at a complete stop for most railroads, and chances are if you see a job openning on a RR's website, you probably won't get it. It will probably be bid on by the people in the union who need the job. You should start seeing real job openings appear late 2nd quarter of 2010, if the economy continues to slowly improve.

Anywho, that's my 2 cents.

-Evan

it's exactly what's needed and what's done. j.p. morgan risked money to keep the system going and he thought it was his duty to do so.

one thing that occurred to me is that buffet might feel compelled to push for and finance industry on his routes -- reinvest in american heavy industry and get us out of 'internet vectors, where only about 12 people work for 3Bn dollar paper valued companies? if a railroad can make money transporting to and from, why wouldn't that encourage them to build and develop cargo sources?

evan123 said:

As long as they continue to work on creating more jobs, all the power to them.

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Hi All: To me, right now would be the time too think seriously about electrification of the railroad..It could bring all good things out..It would help tremendously with more freight..let alone passenger business, if he is serious..He could haul longer trains, make things hum..



Bob Cass

BobCass said:

Hi All: To me, right now would be the time too think seriously about electrification of the railroad..It could bring all good things out..It would help tremendously with more freight..let alone passenger business, if he is serious..He could haul longer trains, make things hum..



Bob Cass

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That would require hundreds of billions of dollars to do, let alone further extensive research so that the freight can continue to haul thousands of tons of freight over large sums of distance, IE: The Great Tehachapi.

while electrification worked in other country's. compare the trains they run to the conditions they run here. the german made units DRGW had and SP had passed with flying colors in germany. however once in the united states, they where pretty much failures.

Think coal.

Jimmyp4 said:

while electrification worked in other country's. compare the trains they run to the conditions they run here. the german made units DRGW had and SP had passed with flying colors in germany. however once in the united states, they where pretty much failures.

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Those locomotives you reffered to are in one of my train books and those are the Krauss-Maffei built C-C type locomotives which look really strange now that I think about it!