The search is always on for the “Next Berkshire Hathaway,” and it’s generally a Quixotic search, there will never be another Warren Buffett or another Charlie Munger, and there won’t be another Berkshire. The next great investment conglomerate will look entirely different.

But one thing that the search does is give us a useful mindset:  It can lead us to latch on to managers that stand out as having a rational strategy, huge ambition to build something large over a long period of time (but no rush to do so immediately), and who can speak honestly and clearly about their plans, treat investors as partners, and have their own “skin in the game” (meaning, their money is largely tied up in their company)… if you find that, and learn enough through the way that management communicates with shareholders to have some confidence that they’re making smart and careful investment decisions, it’s often worth buying. Especially if it’s very small, growing, and rationally valued.

That’s what I’m adding to the $100K Lock Box Portfolio today… and, as the headline indicates, it’s a little bit hard to buy.

Teqnion (TEQ.ST) is a very small serial acquirer in Sweden that’s built on culture, decentralization and owning relatively high-margin businesses, mostly in niche areas of manufacturing. In some ways they’re like a much smaller version of better-known scandinavian serial acquirers like LifCo (dental and industrial) or Lagercrantz (electronics), both of which have thrived as they’ve acquired large numbers of very small businesses (even for Lifco, which now has a market cap of close to $10 billion, the average acquisition has been only about $10 million).

Those two are both interesting investments to consider, by the way, and are a little more mature and easier to buy than Teqnion, since they’re on the main Stockholm Stock Exchange… though, like Teqnion, neither trades over the counter in the US.

TEQ trades on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Stockholm, the junior exchange in Sweden for smaller stocks. It is available through international trading platforms like Interactive Brokers (which is what I use and recommend for access to global markets, you can use my referral link here to open an account and we both might get a small reward, perhaps including shares of IBKR stock), but it is not generally traded OTC outside of Sweden, and there is no “pink sheets” ticker for US ...