Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Japan's record earthquake-triggered disaster is a buying opportunity and he won't sell his shares in the country because its future hasn't been changed by the disaster.
Buffett canceled a trip to Japan to visit a factory owned by Iscar Metalworking Cos.'s Tungaloy Corp. in Fukushima Prefecture, where desperate efforts are under way to keep the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's reactors from suffering meltdowns.
Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns 80 percent of Iscar, a maker of cutting tools.
"If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them because of the events of the past 10 days or so," said Buffett, speaking to reporters in the South Korean city of Daegu, where he arrived Monday to attend a ceremony for a new factory being built by TaeguTec Ltd. "Something out of the blue like this, an extraordinary event, really creates a buying opportunity."
"It'll take some time to rebuild, but it will not change the future of, the economic future of Japan," said Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and chief executive officer.