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American billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is looking to raise ¥182.3 billion ($1.14 billion) in a five-part yen bond sale, tapping Japan's debt market again as it keeps funding its holdings in the country with local currency.
The offering is split into five tranches with maturities starting at three years, according to a term sheet seen on Nov. 13.
The deal is the latest in a string of yen debt sales by the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate since it first borrowed in Japan in 2019. Berkshire raised ¥210.1 billion in a multi-tranche sale in November 2025, and about $1.9 billion in October 2024, one of the largest yen offerings by a foreign company in years.
Why Berkshire borrows in yen
Berkshire has used yen bonds to help pay for its stakes in Japan's five biggest trading houses, Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp., Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co. and Sumitomo Corp. It disclosed the investments in August 2020 and has added to them since, after the companies agreed to let it lift its holdings above the 10% cap it had originally set.
Borrowing in yen lets Berkshire match the currency of its debt to the currency of those assets. That cushions it against swings in the exchange rate, and Japan's low interest rates have kept the cost of the debt modest compared with dollar borrowing.
The sale is being run under Greg Abel, the former head of Berkshire's non-insurance businesses, who took over as chief executive on Jan. 1, 2026, after Buffett stepped back from the role he held for six decades.
Buffett's Berkshire
Buffett, 96, took control of Berkshire Hathaway, then a struggling New England textile maker, in 1965 and turned it into a holding company that owns insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, energy utilities and dozens of other businesses, along with large stakes in Apple Inc., American Express Co. and Coca-Cola Co.
He remains Berkshire's largest individual shareholder, and his fortune comes almost entirely from his stake in the company. Buffett has pledged to give away more than 99% of his wealth and has donated billions of dollars' worth of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation and to four family foundations.
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