Warren Buffett has for the first time said that Berkshire Hathaway overpaid for Kraft’s merger with Heinz, in a rare admission of failure by the investor with the Midas touch.
The acknowledgment came days after his investment group took a multibillion-dollar writedown on its stake in the struggling US consumer goods group.
“We overpaid for Kraft,” Mr Buffett said in a CNBC interview, adding that he was “wrong in a couple of ways on Kraft Heinz”. Mr Buffett and Brazilian investment fund 3G Capital bought Kraft in 2015 to merge with Heinz in a deal valuing Kraft at $62.6bn. When the combined company floated on the stock market at the time it was valued at $89bn; yesterday it was worth $41.6bn.