Subject: Re: brk, supply and demand,
I wonder if Uncle Warren is rethinking a 1$$ a B share quarterly dividend? The taxable event would be more than paid for by the increase in demand for the common, the same argument I made in 2008.

I definitely question your confident assumption that it would be good for the stock price to introduce a dividend. Quite often--usually?--the introduction of a dividend is taken by the market (often very correctly) as an admission that the company in question can no longer find good ways to deploy capital, and has gone ex growth. It's headed to the cash cow department. The corporate equivalent of trading your sports car for a minivan.

Consider the case of Microsoft. The real total return in the first year after they announced their first dividend in 2003 was negative, starting off with a prompt 10% drop.
And the real total return was still negative 9.99 years after the announcement (!), even though the business continued to do very well throughout that period.
(the price went up a hair on the exact tenth anniversary, achieving a positive ten year real total return before taxes of +0.09%/year, and has been positive since)

Yes, it's likely that Berkshire will opt for a dividend at some point, though I doubt it will be any time soon. I think that the typical market multiples the year(s) after that will be lower than the typical multiple in the years leading up to that, not higher. They'll be treated as a utility.

Jim