MADRID (MarketWatch) — One could call it the golden seal of investor approval.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, +0.36% BRK.B, +0.07% is taking a stake in the mega-merger between Kraft Foods Group Inc. US:KRFT and H.J. Heinz Co., which is owned by 3G Capital and Berkshire.

As part of the deal, announced Tuesday, Kraft shareholders will own 49% of the combined company and get a special cash dividend of $16.50 per share. This is where Buffett comes in: That special-dividend payout of around $10 billion is being fully funded by an equity contribution from Berkshire Hathaway and 3G. He told CNBC that Berkshire will have a $9.5 billion stake in the new company.

Gushing away in a statement accompanying the deal, the so-called Oracle of Omaha said: “I am delighted to play a part in bringing these two winning companies and their iconic brands together. This is my kind of transaction, uniting two world-class organizations and delivering shareholder value. I’m excited by the opportunities for what this new combined organization will achieve.”

Buffett’s kind of deal. And maybe everyone else’s, too, as shares of Kraft shot up 32% in early trading. Already joint owners in Heinz, Berkshire and 3G will now have a stake in the fifth-largest food and beverage company in the world, which is to be jointly headquartered in Pittsburgh and the Chicago area. Berkshire also already has a 0.03% stake in Kraft, according to FactSet.

Read:Buffett’s profit on his small Kraft stake

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The Kraft deal shouldn’t be a surprise given Buffett has previously told his shareholders this: “Before looking at new investments, we consider adding to old ones. If a business is attractive enough to buy once, it may well pay to repeat the process.”

The list of subsidiary companies under the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella is a mile long. He has a stake in practically everything from bricks to diamonds to car insurance. As for his deal prowess, Fortune last year listed his best six investments of all time, ranked by annual return.

Among these was PetroChina Co. PTR, -1.22% . Berkshire bought a 1.3% stake in the oil company in 2002 and 2003, paying about $488 million. Buffett’s hunch was that the Chinese company was worth much more, and he sold in 2007, making $3.6 billion.

Don’t miss:A look back at Berkshire’s foreign deals

Berkshire is also the biggest shareholder in Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, +0.08% after investing $290 million back in 1990, when banks were not so popular because of the U.S. savings-and-loan crisis. From a split-adjusted average price of $2.40 back then, shares are currently trading around $55, meaning the Sage is well in the green here.

Of course, Buffett hasn’t always gotten deals right. One example is quadrupling the company’s stake in ConocoPhillips COP, -0.61% as oil and gas prices neared a peak, a call that cost Berkshire billions. Buffett has referred to it as a “major mistake.”

Also read:Buffett talks cockroaches as he explains his Tesco mistake

Still, the reason Buffett remains an influential investor should be clear. His top holdings recently made him about $840 million in one day.

And pulling more words of wisdom out of his shareholder letters, the latest deal makes sense. In the 2014 shareholder letter, he had this to say: “Who has ever benefited during the past 238 years by betting against America?”

And then this: “The unconventional, but inescapable, conclusions to be drawn from the past fifty years is that it has been far safer to invest in a diversified collection of American businesses than to invest in securities ... whose values have been tied to American currency.”

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