Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiums) in a broad portfolio of subsidiaries, equity positions and other securities. The company has been overseen since 1965 by its chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and (since 1978) vice chairman Charlie Munger, who are known for their advocacy of value investing principles. Under their direction, the company's book value has grown at an average rate of 20%, compared to about 10% from the S&P 500 index with dividends included over the same period, while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt. The company's insurance brands include auto insurer GEICO and reinsurance firm General Re. Its non-insurance subsidiaries operate in diverse sectors such as confectionery, retail, railroads, home furnishings, machinery, jewelry, apparel, electrical power and natural gas distribution. Among its partially owned businesses are Pilot Flying J (38.6%), Kraft Heinz Company (26.7%), American Express (18.8%), Bank of America (11.9%), The Coca-Cola Company (9.32%) and Apple (5.57%). Berkshire is the seventh largest component of the S&P 500 index and the top-ranked company in the Forbes Global 2000, which takes into account both market value and fundamental data. The company is one of the largest American-owned private employers in the United States. Its class A shares have the highest per-share price of any public company in the world, reaching $500,000 in March 2022, because Buffett chooses not to split the stock. History Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to a textile manufacturing company established by Oliver Chace in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the founder of the first successful textile mill in America. Chace founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929, the Valley Falls Company merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company established in 1889, in Adams, Massachusetts. The combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. In 1955, Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates merged with the Hathaway Manufacturing Company which had been founded in 1888 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, by Horatio Hathaway with profits from whaling and the China Trade. Hathaway had been successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a general decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton,