With markets in trouble, Buffett's on buying binge

NEW YORK - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which yesterday agreed to buy Constellation Energy Group Inc., is increasing the pace of deals as debt markets freeze up and stocks fall.

The deal to pay $4.7 billion for Constellation is Buffett's eighth acquisition disclosed since October, compared with six in the prior 12 months, when the largest was a $350 million purchase of an underwear and pajama company. Omaha-based Berkshire, which had $31.2 billion in cash on June 30, is acting as buyouts by competitors slow amid a credit crunch.

"This is the kind of environment that opens up more opportunities for someone like Berkshire who does still have a lot of cash," said Gary Ransom, an analyst with Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller.

Buffett's recent deals include agreeing in April to provide $6.5 billion to help Mars Inc. buy Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. in a deal giving him a discounted stake in the chewing gum maker and pledging in July $3 billion to Dow Chemical Co.'s $15.4 billion purchase of Rohm & Haas Co.

Buffett is making deals at a time when others can't. A yearlong contraction in global credit markets has choked funding for leveraged buyouts and reduced corporations' ability to acquire rivals, shrinking the value of announced mergers 29 percent to $2.29 trillion this year from the same period in 2007, Bloomberg data show.

"When there are market dislocations, we're always going to take advantage of them," Buffett said during the company's annual meeting in May. "Berkshire will make some extra money out of this."

The Constellation deal, struck by Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., was revealed as American International Group, the largest US insurer, tries to sell assets to repay an emergency $85 billion loan from the government. Berkshire typically gets about half of its revenue from its insurer units, and Buffett said last year that he's interested in acquiring "a great business in any industry that we would understand."

Investors have been speculating Buffett might bid on financial companies as their market value plunged on losses tied to home loans.