PacifiCorp For the past several years,
Berkshire Hathaway had been unsuccessful in identifying attractive acquisition opportunities. In 2001, Buffett addressed the issue head-on in his annual letter to shareholders:
Some years back, a good $10 million idea could do wonders for us (witness our investment in the Washington Post in 1973 or GEICO in 1976). Today, the combination of ten such ideas and a triple in the value of each would increase the net worth of Berkshire by only ¼ of 1%. We need “elephants” to make significant gains now—and they are hard to find.
By 2004, Berkshire’s fruitless search for “elephants” had begun to take its toll. In his annual letter that year, Buffett lamented his failure to make any multibillion-dollar acquisitions, and he bemoaned Berkshire’s large cash balance that had been accumulating since 2002. “We don’t enjoy sitting on $43 billion of cash equivalents that are earning paltry returns,” Buffett said. “What Charlie [Munger] and I would like is a little action now.”