Finance History | Home Capital — Berkshire's C$2 Billion Liquidity Backstop

At Home Capital Group's offices at 145 King Street West in Toronto, the mortgage lender announced late on June 21, 2017 that Berkshire Hathaway had agreed to supply both emergency liquidity and equity after a rapid loss of depositor confidence. Berkshire committed a new C$2 billion credit facility for Home Trust Company to replace an existing emergency line, pairing a 9% rate on drawn funds with a 1% standby fee on unused capacity under the announced terms. The equity plan totalled approximately C$400 million at C$10.30 per share, but it was deliberately split: an initial approximately C$153.2 million purchase could close first, while an additional C$246.8 million investment needed approval from Home Capital shareholders other than Berkshire. If both tranches closed, Berkshire would own about 38.4% of Home Capital without board-nomination or other special governance rights, making the proposed stake large enough to signal confidence but short of outright control. The structure gave Home Capital two different kinds of reassurance because the credit line protected near-term funding capacity while the common shares absorbed ordinary business risk permanently, and Berkshire was compensated separately for each role. Home Capital completed the initial equity investment and put the facility in place on June 29, 2017, but shareholders retained the power to reject the dilutive second tranche, showing that a crisis agreement can still preserve a meaningful governance check for existing owners. For Berkshire, the transaction resembled lender-of-last-resort finance without being public policy: it could commit a large balance sheet quickly, charge for unused availability, buy equity below the pre-crisis trading range, and stop its ownership at the amount actually approved. The cover photograph shows 145 King Street West, Home Capital's filed principal business address in 2017; Djuradj Vujcic photographed the tower in 2021, and the image is reused under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.