It looks like Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A) CEO Warren Buffett needs another bite of the big apple. Bloomberg News reports that last night Buffett bought a stake in The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS). Let's hope he has better luck with this investment than the last time he ventured into New York to buy an investment bank -- his 1987 buy of a stake in bond trader, Salomon Brothers. Back then, Buffett doubled his money in a decade -- and went through nine months of misery cleaning it up after a bond trading scandal.

But let's get back to the present -- what exactly did Buffet do with Goldman? He bought "$5 billion of perpetual preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend. Berkshire also gets warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock at $115 a share at any time in the next five years," according to Bloomberg. Goldman can buy Berkshire's preferred stock in Goldman "at any time at a 10 percent premium" and it yields a "10 percent dividend," according to Bloomberg.

Will this work out better for Buffett than his ill-fated Salomon Brothers deal? in September 1987, 21 years ago, Buffett bought "$700 million of Salomon convertible preferred stock -- pay[ing] 9% and convertible after three years into Salomon common stock at $38 a share--against the $30 for which the stock had been selling. This equated to a 12% stake in the company," according to Carol Loomis.

Continue reading Buffett takes a bite of Goldman Sachs: Is this Salomon redux?

Buffett takes a bite of Goldman Sachs: Is this Salomon redux? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.