Berkshire drops pipeline purchase as Biden sets antitrust agenda

Just days after President Biden signed an executive order that calls on the federal government to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Dominion Energy agreed to call off a natural gas pipeline sale.

Dominion says the decision "is a result of ongoing uncertainty associated with achieving" antitrust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission. 

At the FTC, however, there wasn't all that much uncertainty, even before Biden's pronouncement.

The Associated Press quotes the the FTC's Holly Vedova as saying the companies shouldn't have even tried because the agency had already opposed a similar deal involving Questar and Berkshire's Kern River pipeline, since they are the only two pipelines bringing natural gas to central Utah.

"It is disappointing that the FTC had to expend significant resources to review this transaction when we previously filed suit in 1995 to block the same combination. Given our prior action, and the even closer competition that developed between the pipelines since then, this is representative of the type of transaction that should not make it out of the boardroom."

Dominion indicates it did know there could be trouble, saying termination of that part of a larger deal was "a potential outcome provided for in the agreement" to sell Questar Pipelines to BHE.

The decision has no effect on the rest of the deal announced last July, and closed in November, that had Berkshire paying $4 billion, and assuming another $5.7 billion in debt, to buy Dominion's natural gas transmission and storage assets.

Berkshire will get a $1.3 billion refund, and won't take on about $430 million of Dominion debt, now that Questar has been severed from the original transaction.

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - July 16, 2021

Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices.

Holdings are as of March 31, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on May 17, 2021, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of March 31, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management’s 13F filing on May 17, 2021.

In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2020 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2020 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2020 in the letter.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

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