Go shopping, of course. The quintessential value investor reacts exactly the way you’d expect, snapping up a good company that (he thinks) has been unfairly punished in the market. From CNBC.com:
A subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway just announced a tentative agreement to buy Constellation Energy for roughly $4.7 billion in cash.
MidAmerican Energy Holdings is paying just $26.50 a share. Constellation’s stock closed at $58.37 last Friday and finished 2007 at $102.53.
Constellation’s stock has plunged in recent days after S&P put its debt rating on watch amid worries about the liquidity needs of its commodities trading business.
In the news release, Buffett is quoted as saying, “MidAmerican has been a wonderful steward of its energy assets and the acquisition of Constellation Energy, when completed, will prove beneficial to all constituents.”
It appears Buffett is indeed taking advantage of the recent financial turmoil to pick up what he would call a good company at a great price. We assume he sees something in Constellation that he didn’t see in AIG, since he declined to come to that company’s rescue earlier this week after it suffered a similar, but more extreme, battering on Wall Street.
Barbara!