I don't know anything particular about Berkshire, but as someone who works in the financial industry, my interpretation would be the following: "Equity holdings" here appears to mean holdings by Berkshire of stock in other entities/companies. "Net worth" is defined as assets minus liabilities, and since equity holdings are usually listed as assets, it is conceivable that if there were large liabilities, that this particular asset class was larger than the net worth at some point in the past, but is now much smaller than the net worth. I seem to recall that Berkshire is primarily an insurance holding company, so its potential liabilities could be very large (future claims). You don't want to get me started on insurance companies, but they are primarily state-regulated, not federally-regulated, and have the most opaque accounting of any companies, anywhere. I think that Gov Arnold's choice of Buffet for economic help for California is the dumbest single thing that Arnold has ever done. (Arnold warned Buffet that if he opened his mouth again re raising Cal taxes, that Arnold would have him do 500 situps. I don't think we've heard from him again on this issue.) At 10:45 AM 3/7/2004, Marc LeBrun wrote:
Double take dept.: At first sight this looked like a whopper, but there's an interpretation that actually could make sense (although it also could probably have been better expressed!). ======== Berkshire Hathaway Profit Doubles By Philip Klein Sat Mar 6, 9:22 PM ET Reuters ... "In the 1980s, equity holdings were 114 percent of Berkshire's net worth, but that fell to an average of 50 percent in 2000 to 2003, Buffett said." ...