SA investors can now be like Buffet
July 22, 2009
Johannesburg - South Africans can now invest in the legendary Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway investment company, the JSE said on Wednesday.
Local investors could trade the investment company through the listing of a single stock future (SSF) without using their R2 million foreign allowance, the JSE said in a statement.
SSFs are futures contracts with the underlying asset being one particular stock, often in batches of 100. A futures contract is a legally binding agreement that provides an investor the right to buy or sell an underlying asset at a fixed price on a future date.
"Like the other international derivatives (IDX) listed on the JSE, the Berkshire Hathaway SSF can be purchased through any JSE-registered broker in the same way one would purchase local derivatives products," Allan Thomson, head of Derivatives Trading at the JSE said.
The other IDX products trading on the JSE include blue chip companies such as Nokia, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, BP, Vodafone, GlaxoSmithKline and Apple.
While retail investors and corporate entities did not have any exchange control restrictions, institutional investors had to comply with foreign portfolio regulations, the JSE said.
Contracts were priced and settled in rand, it added.
"If the rand depreciates, then the local investor will benefit, allowing IDX products to be used as a rand hedge," the JSE explained.
The JSE would charge an initial margin of R50 000 per Berkshire Hathaway contract, but this excluded brokerage charges, it said.
Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company listed on the New York Stock Exchange with headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, US.
The company's core business is insurance, including property and casualty insurance, reinsurance and specialty nonstandard insurance.
It also owns a diverse range of businesses from sweet manufacturers and jewellers, to several regional electric and gas utilities. - Sapa
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