General Electric Co. (GE.N) jumped the most in two years amid speculation that Warren Buffett will buy a stake in the beleaguered manufacturer.
The sudden increase is because of market chatter that the billionaire investor will take a position, Nicholas Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co., said Tuesday. There’s no confirmation that Buffett, the chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will buy into GE. Buffett has previously said he would consider an investment in GE or assets of the company if the price was right.
“It may be a plausible theory, given Buffett had recently spoken to the press that he might be interested in GE at the right price,” Heymann said in a telephone interview.
GE declined to comment. Berkshire Hathaway didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The shares climbed 3.9 per cent toUS $13.39 at 11:48 a.m. in New York after advancing as much as 5.7 per cent for the biggest intraday gain since October 2015. GE’s surge on Tuesday followed its decline a day earlier to the lowest since the depths of the financial crisis in July 2009. GE is the worst performer on the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year, a position it occupied last year as well.
Buffett has been an investor in GE before. He helped inject capital into the industrial giant during the crisis and received a common-stock holding once some warrants expired years later. Berkshire has mostly sold that stock, Buffett said in February.
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