Two companies backed by Warren Buffett strike deals worth a combined $8.6 billion

• Two companies that count Warren Buffett as a shareholder announced acquisitions this week.
• Liberty Global has agreed to buy Swiss telecoms rival Sunrise Communications for $7.5 billion in cash, while Brazilian payments group StoneCo is set to acquire software group Linx for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.
• Assuming Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway hasn't altered its stakes in the two companies, they are currently worth a combined $1.3 billion.
• The deals come after Berkshire reached a $10 billion agreement to buy most of Dominion Energy's natural gas assets in early July.
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Two companies backed by Warren Buffett followed the famed investor's lead this week, by announcing acquisitions worth a combined $8.6 billion.

Liberty Global plans to buy Swiss telecoms rival Sunrise Communications for $7.5 billion in cash, while Brazilian payments group StoneCo intends to purchase software group Linx for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.

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Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reached a $10 billion agreement in early July to buy most of Dominion Energy's natural-gas assets after several months of inactivity, perhaps giving the green light for its portfolio companies to also strike big deals.

Berkshire owned a total of 27 million Liberty Global "A" and "C" shares at the last count, or more than 4% of the shares outstanding. The conglomerate also held around 14 million StoneCo shares, giving it a 5.1% stake.

Those positions are worth about $588 million and $742 million respectively, based on the two companies' closing stock prices on Tuesday. Liberty Global shares are slightly down this year, while StoneCo has been one of Buffett's best-performing stocks in recent months.

Berkshire will provide an update on those holdings when it discloses its portfolio as of June 30 later this week.

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Liberty, whose chairman is media mogul John Malone, has agreed to pay 110 Swiss francs per share ($120) per Sunrise share — a 32% premium to Sunrise's volume-weighted average share price over the past 60 days.

StoneCo will pay cash and stock worth a total of 33.8 Brazilian reals ($6.27) per Linx share, representing a 42% premium to Linx's volume-weighted average share price over the 60 days to August 6.