Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett, who has sold most of the company's holdings in European sovereign debt, said Berkshire isn't interested in helping to bail out lenders on the continent.
"They need capital in their banks, in many of their banks," Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and chief executive officer, told Bloomberg Television Friday on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "We would not be a good prospect," he said, adding that Berkshire has received "very, very few" calls about putting capital into European banks. "Not quite none at all," he said, declining to name any companies.
Berkshire sold most of its European sovereign holdings about a year and a half ago, the billionaire said Friday on CNBC. A German reinsurance unit still holds some bonds from that nation, and Berkshire is "fine" with the investment, Buffett said. As for the U.S. economy, Europe's debt crisis is bound to have some fallout, he said. Still, the impact on the U.S. will be nothing like the 2008 credit crisis, Buffett said on CNN, and the domestic economy is still growing, he told interviewers.
European and U.S. stock markets have sagged on concern that Greece may default on its debts, setting off a chain reaction that could engulf other nations and their banks. Berkshire has made bullish derivative bets on global equity markets including contracts tied to the Euro Stoxx 50 Index, and Buffett has traveled to Europe in search of acquisitions.
Buffett said in July that Berkshire sold European sovereign holdings a year earlier and called the continent's problems surmountable. His Omaha, Neb., company has built the biggest equity stake in Munich Re of Germany, the world's No. 1 reinsurer.
Berkshire did come to the aid of Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. lender, with a $5 billion purchase of preferred stock and warrants announced in August. While losses tied to faulty lending will take much longer to clean up, "the bank has a wonderful underlying business" and eventually will be a money-maker, Buffett said.
"The bet is, is Brian going to get rid of those problems?" Buffett said, referring to B of A's chief executive, Brian Moynihan. "It won't take six months or a year; it will take much longer than that even. But the underlying business is doing fine."
Moynihan deserves time to turn the Charlotte, N.C., company around, according to Buffett, who said he'd never spoken to Moynihan before August. "I don't want him to step down," Buffett said. "Brian, stay at work."
