Berkshire’s Occidental Buying Binge Pushes Stake Above Key Level

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s stake in Occidental Petroleum Corp. surpassed a key level that could entail new quarterly disclosures and a boost to the company’s earnings.

Warren Buffett’s conglomerate reported in a filing Monday that it now holds 188 million shares of the energy company’s common stock, a little more than 20% of Occidental’s 931 million shares outstanding. According to auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers, a company with a stake that large in another firm exercises “significant influence” over that business, and may have to include earnings from that investment in its own results under the so-called equity method of accounting. ...