On his first visit to Tokyo as chief executive, Greg Abel said Berkshire Hathaway was considering raising its stakes in Japan’s five trading houses — general trading companies (Sogo Shosha) — above current levels, and that it was an investment “we intend to hold for many decades”. The five shares rose that day, led by Mitsubishi at about 4.7%. We reconstructed the trade from primary sources — the shareholder letter, the Q2 filing and Japanese ownership disclosures — and applied prices from our database. Our findings: stakes that cost 15.4 billion dollars are now worth about 43 billion; yen borrowing covers the entire cost but none of the profit; and a central bank is poised to raise rates on the currency that financed it all.
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