Warren Buffett 2015 Annual Meeting: $60B Cash, Clayton Defense, Kraft-Heinz Merger

2015 Berkshire 50th anniversary meeting with 'north of 40,000' shareholders from '53 countries.' Entertainment includes 'live steers walking down the street...University of Nebraska cheerleaders.' Shares started at '$11 and change and today...hovering around $215,000' - 'created hundreds and hundreds of multi-millionaires and a few billionaires too.'

'Just above $60 billion dollars in cash on the books at Berkshire.' Would borrow for big deal: 'We'd borrow some money sure...we wouldn't take on excessive leverage but if we had something that costs us all the cash...we'll always keep at least $20 billion dollars in cash under any circumstances and if we were getting down close to that level and we could borrow a modest amount more to complete a deal a big deal we'd do it in a heartbeat.' Especially at current low rates.

On unbelievably low rates: 'I wouldn't have predicted they would have continued like this and I certainly wouldn't have predicted that Poland would be issuing a bond with a negative yield.'

Asked about tough Clayton Homes predatory lending questions at meeting. 'Is there anything you will change at Clayton about how Clayton does business going forward from this point? No.' Buffett: 'I've looked at the way our lender board is handled in every retail place I've looked at our less than one page declaration that says check all these other lenders and we'll send your application into any of them we've got 300,000 loans on the books in the last three years any letter written to me at headquarters gets to me I have not received one complaint.' On accusations: 'If you have 300,000 people with mortgages and some people lose their homes I don't blame them for being unhappy...some people are going to lose their homes when they borrow money to buy.'

On Kraft-Heinz: 'Partnered with 3G Capital to buy Heinz...here comes Kraft you're doing the same thing you had gotten rid of your Kraft shares several years ago you were unhappy with the company now you're buying it.' Buffett: 'I did not like what they did when they bought Cadbury and I think our people are going to do a terrific job the Heinz people in running Kraft...Kraft had...great brands I liked the business I didn't like the acquisition.'