BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.
Acquisition Criteria
收购标准
We are eager to hear about businesses that meet all of the following criteria:
我们渴望了解符合以下所有标准的企业：
1.Large purchases (at least $10 million of after-tax earnings),
规模较大的收购（税后利润至少 1,000 万美元），
2.Demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of no interest to us, nor are “turnaround” situations),
具备经验证的稳定盈利能力（我们对未来预测或“扭亏为盈”的情形不感兴趣），
3.Businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt,
在很少或几乎无负债的情况下实现良好股本回报的企业，
4.Management in place (we can’t supply it),
管理团队已就位（我们无法提供管理层），
5.Simple businesses (if there’s lots of technology, we won’t understand it),
业务简单（如果技术含量很多，我们就无法理解），
6.An offering price (we don’t want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown).
明确的要约价格（在价格未知的情况下，即便是初步交流，我们也不想浪费自己或卖方的时间）。
The larger the company, the greater will be our interest: We would like to make an acquisition in the $2-3 billion range.
公司越大，我们的兴趣越高：我们希望进行 20–30 亿美元区间的收购。
We will not engage in unfriendly takeovers. We can promise complete confidentiality and a very fast answer — customarily within five minutes — as to whether we’re interested. We prefer to buy for cash, but will consider issuing stock when we receive as much in intrinsic business value as we give.
我们不会进行不友好的收购。我们可以承诺完全保密，并就我们是否感兴趣给出非常迅速的答复——通常在五分钟内。我们偏好以现金收购，但在我们获得的内在业务价值与我们付出的价值相当时，也会考虑发行股票。
Our favorite form of purchase is one fitting the pattern through which we acquired Nebraska Furniture Mart, Fechheimer’s, Borsheim’s and Central States Indemnity. In cases like these, the company’s owner-managers wish to generate significant amounts of cash, sometimes for themselves, but often for their families or inactive shareholders. At the same time, these managers wish to remain significant owners who continue to run their companies just as they have in the past. We think we offer a particularly good fit for owners with such objectives and we invite potential sellers to check us out by contacting people with whom we have done business in the past.
我们最喜欢的收购方式，类似于我们收购 Nebraska Furniture Mart、Fechheimer’s、Borsheim’s 和 Central States Indemnity 的模式。在这些案例中，公司所有者-经理人希望获得大量现金，有时为自己，但更多是为其家人或不活跃股东。同时，这些经理人希望继续保持重要持股，并像以往一样经营他们的公司。我们认为自己与这类目标高度契合，也欢迎潜在卖方联系我们过往的交易对象来了解我们。
Charlie and I frequently get approached about acquisitions that don’t come close to meeting our tests: We’ve found that if you advertise an interest in buying collies, a lot of people will call hoping to sell you their cocker spaniels. A line from a country song expresses our feeling about new ventures, turnarounds, or auction-like sales: “When the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.”
我和 Charlie 经常收到一些并不接近我们标准的收购邀约：我们发现，如果你登广告说想买牧羊犬，就会有很多人来电话希望把他们的 可卡犬卖给你。一句乡村歌曲的歌词表达了我们对新创项目、扭亏项目或竞拍式出售的感受：“When the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.”
Besides being interested in the purchase of businesses as described above, we are also interested in the negotiated purchase of large, but not controlling, blocks of stock comparable to those we hold in Capital Cities, Salomon, Gillette, USAir, Champion, and American Express. We are not interested, however, in receiving suggestions about purchases we might make in the general stock market.
除了对上述类型的整体并购感兴趣外，我们也对协商购买大额但非控股的股票头寸感兴趣，类似我们在 Capital Cities、Salomon、Gillette、USAir、Champion 和 American Express 的持股。不过，我们对有关我们在公开二级市场应当买入哪些股票的建议并不感兴趣。