Buffett - Berkshire prefers to keep buying big businesses: CNBC

(Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway (NYS:BRK.A) head Warren Buffett on Monday said that he preferred to keep buying large operating businesses to build the company for the future.

"Our preference at Berkshire is to keep buying big operating businesses," the billionaire investor said in an interview on CNBC. "In terms of building Berkshire for the long term, we just like adding earning power, big chunks of earning power."

However, he added that stock holdings were "generally for very long term."

Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders on Saturday, in which he signalled that he plans to make more large acquisitions - so-called "elephants" - for Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett has become an American icon who has built Berkshire over decades until it now owns dozens of businesses spanning industries from ice cream to insurance and employing more than 330,000 people.

Regulators are weighing whether Berkshire Hathaway should be considered a systemically important financial institution, or one that is too big to fail, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.

"We've heard absolutely nothing from the people in charge of what's called SIFI," Buffett said on CNBC on Monday.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)