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The shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway may have been seeing glimpses into the future without Buffett for some time now. Most of the deals that Berkshire Hathaway made last year were not directly involving the 82-year-old billionaire investor. They either started with one of the two investment managers Buffett recently hired over the last few years, or they started with one of the subsidiaries. No matter what way you look at it, Berkshire Hathaway did quite well during 2012.

Buffett will release his annual letter to shareholders this Friday afternoon, which is later on today.

The author of Warren Buffett’s Successor: Who It Is and Why It Matters, Jeff Matthews, tells us that last year’s deals are very comforting because they show how Berkshire Hathaway could work once Buffett is no longer there.

“It’s very reassuring. This didn’t used to happen,” said Matthews.

The main thing shareholders will miss most about Warren Buffett is his fantastic judgment and excellent connections. Take the 23.3 billion dollar deal to purchase a portion of H.J. Heinz, a Pittsburgh-based company.

No matter what kind of deal is being made by Berkshire Hathaway, the annual letter written by Warren Buffett is possibly the best read document throughout the entire business world. This is all because of his incredible record of accomplishment and his excellent ability to explain complicated matters in plain English.

There’s no question that shareholders are wondering about the future of the former textile manufacturer known as Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is getting up there in years. He also recently suffered from prostate cancer, although it wasn’t life-threatening and he seems to have gotten through it quite nicely.

Some of the biggest dollar value deals Berkshire Hathaway made last year are:

Repurchasing $1.2 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares and purchasing $1.5 billion in mortgage loans from Residential Capital.

They also made a $4 billion deal to cover CIGNA Corp.’s insurance losses, and received a $2.2 billion premium in exchange.

Other deals were made but the terms have not been disclosed. Analysts tell us that the Oriental Trading Co. acquisition, as well as the Prudential real estate network will not likely be a major boost to Berkshire Hathaway’s bottom line by themselves.

The only Berkshire Hathaway deals that Warren Buffett likely initiated are the share repurchase acquirement, the acquisition of Oriental Trading Co. and potentially the deal with CIGNA. The rest of the deals started elsewhere. But there’s no question that Warren Buffett signed off on each and every one of them.

Buffett seems to enjoy all of the speculation revolved around who will eventually run the company. Meyer Shields, KBW analyst, said that Buffett probably won’t help narrow down the competition because of his enjoyment of the speculation.

If you follow the company as an investor, you might look upon these four people as the strongest potential candidates: Greg Abel, CEO and President of MidAmerican; Burlington Northern Santa Fe CEO Matt Rose; Ajit Jain, head of the Berkshire Hathaway reinsurance division; and CEO of Geico, Tony Nicely.

Buffett told us that his son Howard, also a member of the Berkshire Hathaway board, is ideally suited as the company chairman.

Berkshire Hathaway also hired two hedge fund managers, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, who will eventually be able to run the entire Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. They each manage portfolios worth around $4 billion. Buffett continues to make the majority of the investments on behalf of Berkshire Hathaway as he searches for large acquisitions.

Since the end of 2011, Berkshire Hathaway added around 17,000 employees to their payroll. CEO and chairman Warren Buffett expanded their retail, media, manufacturing and insurance businesses.

In total, Berkshire Hathaway and over 80 subsidiaries employ roughly 288,000 people. We learned this through a Berkshire Hathaway regulatory filing yesterday. The total amount of employees is 6.3% higher than the disclosed 270,858 people mentioned in the 2011 annual report.

Berkshire Hathaway has reduced their reliance on insurance companies as they started to invest in a multitude of industries. This willingness has made the company one of the largest employers in the United States. Over the last five years, companies that strictly sell insurance like Chubb Corp. and Travelers Cos. have actually reduced their staff throughout the end of 2011 and returned the added capital to their shareholders. Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t pay a dividend and they did not buy back shares for decades until very recently.

Warren Buffett has decided to focus on “hard assets and older fashion businesses,” like manufacturing and railroads, Meyer Shields says, who is an analyst for Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

The Berkshire Hathaway workforce has soared from a decade ago when it was only 147,000 people. Since then, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have made some of their biggest acquisitions including the purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe during 2010 for $26.5 billion. They also added Lubrizol Corp. in 2011 for another $9 billion.

“When you’re buying a company with a market value in the billions or tens of billions, then you’re going to get a significant headcount associated with that,” said Shields.

Buffett has also granted power to deputies in order to make deals to expand their businesses. Managers of a Berkshire Hathaway, including Lubrizol CEO James Hambrick and Victor Mancinelli, leader of CTB Inc., the farm product unit, both announced deals last year that will expand their operations throughout Europe and the United States. These bolt on purchases cost Berkshire Hathaway around $1.8 billion during a nine-month period ending on September 30.

Party Supplies

Warren Buffett also purchased 60 newspapers, including the Richmond Times Dispatch, and he also bought the company Oriental Trading Co., which sells party supplies. Buffett has stated that he would rather buy a company outright then purchase their stock.

All of this expansion shows us that Berkshire Hathaway now employs many US workers. According to the Labor Department data, there were roughly 134,000,000 US employees on non-farm payrolls throughout the end of the year. We can compare this to 130.2 million just 10 years earlier.

The US economy grew by 1.4% last year, and this matched the total gain of 2011. This was the best back-to-back reading since the years 2005 through 2006.

Berkshire Hathaway stock has risen by 9.3% this year in New York trading. It beat out the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which only made a gain of 5.7%. Last year, Warren Buffett’s company rose 17% and the S&P 500 only went up 13%.

Real Estate

The residential real estate market in the United States has rebounded, and this has certainly helped some of the subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway, including the companies that make bricks, sell carpet, put in insulation and sell other building products. Housing starts rose to a 954,000 annual pace this past December, and it is the largest level since 2008 according to Commerce Department figures.

Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway had to cut this workforce during 2009 by over 20,000 jobs during the recession because of a slump in manufacturing and retail.

“We will be adding people at some point, but we won’t do it until we see the demand come back,” said Buffett in a 2009 interview with the CEO of Business Wire. This is a unit of Berkshire Hathaway that posts corporate press releases. “It’ll be a little slow because we don’t want to go through what we did before. Although, I will guarantee you that three years from now, our brick companies, our carpet company, and our insulation company will all be employing far more people than now.”

The latest company disclosure, related to a filing tied into debt issuance, did not break down the employment numbers by unit. Last February, when they issued the 2011 annual report, showed us that 39,000 workers were employed at the railroad, Fruit of the Loom employed over 27,000, Geico employed about 26,000 and Shaw Carpet employed 22,650 people.

During this past December, Geico mentioned that they plan to hire 4000 new employees during 2013. They expanded their payroll by about 20% over the last five years.

Does Warren Buffett know something that the rest of us don’t?

Well, it wouldn’t be surprising since he is the second wealthiest man in the United States of America, and he is estimated to be worth $46 billion at this time. If I was a betting man, I’d say that he definitely knows a lot more than I do.

That’s why I’m really interested in his latest business purchase: Oriental Trading Co., which is a mail order business that sells novelties, supplies, crafts, school supplies and toys.

But why did he make this purchase? Is it just a matter of buying a local business? Oriental Trading Co. and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are both located in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.

Or is Warren Buffett, 82-year-old billionaire, just a fun-loving and happy party animal?

He does own a lot of party related businesses. First up, we have International Dairy Queen Inc., so he has the snack portion of the Obama victory party covered already. Let’s not forget about See’s Candies, which would make excellent party favors. If he wants to go all out and really take care of the partygoers, he can always give them some Helzberg Diamonds. Last but not least, if one of the partygoers happens to get into some kind of an accident, he can help them out by allowing them access to his Geico Insurance Company.

Let’s also remember that he bought most of the newspapers under Media General Inc.’s banner, and he even bought the Omaha World-Herald, which is his hometown newspaper. So he can easily get as much publicity as he wants, and even put his picture in the paper with his favorite party hat on…

There is no question that Warren Buffett is ruling the 21st-century party scene, just like the John D. Rockefeller/Standard Oil of yesteryear.

But this latest Oriental Trading Co. deal shows us that there are some good things on the horizon for America in the future. If the second richest man in the United States of America feels that buying a party supply company is a good bet in our current economy, then he also thinks that Americans are going to have plenty of reasons to celebrate in the near future.

I might be going out on a limb with this next statement, but does Warren Buffett’s latest move come off as a good omen for President Obama? Obama and the rest of the Democrats were thrilled when Warren Buffett told the world that he was in favor of the rich paying more money in taxes – which was later dubbed the Buffett rule. On the other hand, he did not make any new friends in the Republican Party when he made that statement.

So we have to presume that Warren Buffett thinks America is ready to start partying once again, and the party is going to get started by the current president that’s already in power. At least that’s my take based on his current purchase of Oriental Trading Co.

But obviously I could be wrong.

On the other hand, Mrs. Buffett may have just asked him to pick up some party supplies, and since Warren Buffett always think big, he may have just gotten a bit carried away.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett already owns companies related to insurance, newspapers, jewelry and many other areas of interest. Now you can add party planning to the mix since Berkshire Hathaway and the 82-year-old investor will soon acquire Oriental Trading Co.

We learned this past Friday from Warren Buffett that Berkshire Hathaway Inc., his investment firm, will buy Oriental Trading which is based out of Omaha, and it’s the largest direct retailer of over 40,000 discounted party goods. The estimated cost of this purchase is in the neighborhood of $500 million.

Oriental Trading is a mail-order company that specializes in selling school supplies, novelties, toys, crafts and general party supplies. They recently filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the year 2010 because they were burdened by a large debt load and lower consumer spending plus higher costs really hurt the company.

Last year, Oriental Trading re-emerged when company restructuring took place and the majority shareholder, KKR & Co., bought the business with other investors. Previously, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm known as Brentwood Associates owned the business before selling it to the Carlyle Group during 2006.

It is expected that the Berkshire Hathaway deal will close by the end of November.

Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have bought other businesses this year. They bought most of Media General Inc.’s publications, and this is only a month after he picked up the Omaha World-Herald, which is his hometown paper. Berkshire Hathaway’s other subsidiaries are Helzberg Diamonds, See’s Candies, International Dairy Queen Inc. and GEICO Auto Insurance.

Warren Buffett was also placed second on the list of the wealthiest Americans, where we learned he is worth $46 billion. He is second only to Bill Gates who is currently worth $66 billion.