For a company the size of Berkshire Hathaway, with nearly $900 billion in assets, the $6 billion investment was relatively modest.
Perhaps because the amount is just a rounding error for Berkshire, the investment garnered little public attention. There was initial optimism from some—like one article from the Financial Times titled “Why Warren Buffett could lead other money managers into overlooked Japan”—but that attention has waned.
And equity flows from international money managers certainly haven’t followed Buffett’s lead. While there’s been a pickup in recent weeks, the cumulative ¥1.4 trillion (about $13 bn) pales in comparison to the nearly ¥16 trillion in investments made in 2013, the last year of significant foreign investor flows into Japan.