Hints and tips:
...Union Pacific and BNSF — a division of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — were the two US railroads most directly affected by the closures, the association said....
...They include employees of the largest carriers in North America, such as Union Pacific, CSX and BNSF, a business owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway....
...An independent Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, with revenues of $22.5bn in 2021, would rank 129th by size in the Fortune 500....
...In 2009 Berkshire announced the acquisition of railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $44bn including debt. The deal was paid with 60 per cent cash and 40 per cent Berkshire shares....
...That decline more than offset the improvement in underlying earnings at Berkshire, which owns railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe, insurer Geico and chocolate maker See’s Candies....
...Last week Union Pacific Railroad, the largest listed US railroad, said it intended to cut payrolls by 10 per cent in 2019 as it reported a record second-quarter profit of $1.6bn....
...Core businesses of the conglomerate like Geico insurance, the BNSF railroad and the industrials unit that includes Precision Castparts performed solidly in the quarter, each reporting earnings and revenue...
...Winslow used to be the busiest railway hub in northern Arizona....
...Mr Wan will surely approve of my winner, a BNSF railway executive who told a conference: “We move stuff from one place to another.”...
...of BNSF railways and a string of US power companies....
...Precision Castparts, the maker of specialist components for aircraft engines, puts on a bewildering display. A model railway represents the Burlington Northern Santa Fe network....
...A series of mergers in the 1990s left just Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe in the western US; Norfolk Southern and CSX in the eastern US; CP and Canadian National in Canada; and Kansas City...
...Matt Rose, of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said that BNSF would expect to be involved in any such wave of consolidation....
...Hunter Harrison, CP’s chief executive, said last year the rationale for a merger was to eliminate some of the many handovers between the seven big railroads — known as Class Is — that dominate the US and...
...“It has been expected that this would be the response by regulators [to a merger proposal],” Mr Hatch said of the proposal to open up the network....
...The secondary market for shuttle trains on the Burlington North Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways, which dart between the western farm belt and grain customers, illustrates the situation....
...Mr Buffett’s largest deal to date was the takeover of the Burlington Northern Railroad in 2009, when Berkshire paid $26bn for the 77 per cent of the company it did not already own....
...As many as 40,000 shareholders are expected to attend, and early birds were on Friday able to visit the exhibition centre where the event is being held to shop at special stalls set up by Berkshire’s subsidiary...
...Many of the railroads — particularly Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the second-biggest, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — have had to invest heavily to relieve congestion....
...underperforming companies, buying a capital intensive business (Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad) and most recently, a company (the $27bn acquisition of Precision Castparts) about which he admitted...
...BNSF, one of two big railroads serving West Coast ports, said it would “unravel slowly” the operational restrictions it had placed on movements to the facilities....
...BNSF, the railway, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy publish quarterly earnings reports of their own but analysts say other divisions report substantially fewer details than competitor companies....
...Its operating margin has gone from 10 to 30 per cent, as the company has squeezed labour and other costs....
...Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the Warren-Buffett-owned operator of the US’s second-biggest rail network, started refusing from Monday to accept containers from other railroads heading for export from west...
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