Berkshire Hathaway fined $896,000 by DoJ

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc has agreed to pay a $896,000-civil penalty to settle charges of pre-merger reporting and waiting requirements at the time of its acquisition of voting securities of USG Corp, the Department of Justice announced yesterday.

The justice department's  Antitrust Division, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, had filed a civil anti-trust lawsuit in US District Court in Washington, DC, against Berkshire Hathaway for violating the notification requirements of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act of 1976.

It also filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would settle the charges.

Berkshire Hathaway is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. As a result of the acquisition of USG voting securities in December 2013, the firm held about 28 per cent of USG voting securities, valued at over $950 million.

USG, a Delaware corporation, has its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. 

 ''Although we may not seek penalties for every inadvertent error, we will enforce the rules when the same party makes additional mistakes after promises of improved oversight,'' Deborah Feinstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, said in a statement announcing the settlement.

According to the FTC, Berkshire Hathaway failed to notify regulators when it changed convertible notes it owned in USG into 21.4 million voting securities, pushing the value of its USG holdings over a pre-merger reporting threshold.

The company later made a corrective filing with regulators, acknowledging its failure to report the conversion into voting securities. Normally that might be forgiven, however, it came six months after the company made a similar corrective filing tied to its 2013 purchase of $41 million worth of voting securities in Symetra Financial Corp.

According to commentators the settlement was a blemish for Buffet, whose old-fashioned wit and uncanny business sense had earned him the nickname The Oracle of Omaha.