In his 2010 annual letter to shareholders, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO
Warren Buffett used the metaphor of his company's cash as an "elephant gun" to be used in his hunt for big companies to purchase. Ever since then, the news media has fixated on Berkshire Hathaway's hunt to bag that elephant to fuel its future growth. After all, how can an enormous company the size of Berkshire Hathaway grow even larger without swallowing up increasingly larger subsidiaries?
Buffett helped to finance half of the takeover of Heinz last spring, but people have widely agreed that the ketchup company wasn't the elephant Buffett was looking for. 3G Capital will run the company, and 3G is expected to make Heinz more profitable and then release it back into the wild.
Buffett has also fueled the elephant hunt rumors in his TV appearances, where he has tantalizingly revealed elephant near-misses -- that is, big potential acquisition deals this year that didn't get done.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/03/rabbit-hunting-with-warren-buffett/
