It had all the trappings of a classic Warren Buffett deal. There were the preferred shares created just for him, the warrants giving him an option to buy more common stock and a hefty dividend -- 8%, which came to a cool $800 million a year on the $10 billion he plunked down.
On their face, the terms were so favorable for Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. -- and so onerous for the company, the oil driller Occidental Petroleum Corp. -- that fellow billionaire investor Carl Icahn seethed with indignation. It was, he wrote, “like taking candy from a baby.”
