BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY, Warren Buffett’s investment company, is thought to be preparing to make a major acquisition that could be announced as early as today.

Talk on Wall Street has been that Mr Buffett, the 75-year-old investment guru, is set to spend some of the $45 billion (£24 billion) cash pile that has been accumulated by Berkshire. The investment company is holding its annual meeting, dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists”, in Omaha this weekend.

Last year Mr Buffett told investors that he aimed to spend at least $15 billion on acquisitions in the US energy sector.

During the past few months, the “sage of Omaha” has made several small buy-ups including Russell Corporation, a branded clothing maker, Applied Underwriters, a workers’ compensation insurer, and Business Wire, an electronic news distributor. Each deal has cost a few hundred million dollars. The last major acquisition was PacifiCorp, an Oregon utility company, in May last year.

Bid speculation has centred on companies such as PG&E Corporation, a San Franciso utility that has a market value of about $13 billion. Mr Buffett is also thought to be keen to invest in the insurance market, a traditional area of investment for Berkshire. Analysts have pointed to Mercury General, a Los Angeles automotive insurer, as a potential target.

Attendance at the firm’s annual meeting has soared over the years. In 1981 only 12 people attended the company annual meeting. A letter to Berkshire directors in April said: “We can handle 24,000 attendees, but I’m not sure what we do next year.”

At last year’s meeting, Mr Buffett was forced to defend Hank Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG, the American insurance company. General Re, a Berkshire subsidiary, was coming under scrutiny from the US regulators over whether some forms of nontraditional reinsurance transferred enough risk to be accounted for as insurance.

This year, however, Mr Buffett is expected to be congratulated, particularly on the fact that his bet against the dollar, which cost Berkshire almost $1 billion last year, now appears to be paying off.

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