Oct 10 (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A )

has raised 281.8 billion yen ($1.9 billion) in a

yen-denominated bond offer, a move analysts say lays the ground

for the U.S investment company to increase its exposure to

Japanese assets.

The deal was the largest bond sale in the Japanese currency

for the firm in five years, a term sheet reviewed by Reuters on

Thursday showed.

The global yen bond issue signals Buffett's deepening

association with Japan's capital markets after its equity stake

buys in the nation's top five trading houses over the past four

years.

Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A ) said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange

Commission filing that the proceeds raised in the deal would be

used for general corporate purposes. It did not disclose the

size of the deal in the filing.

The firm first announced it would buy stakes in Japan's

trading houses in 2020 with the intention of holding them

long-term and increasing ownership to as much as 9.9%. Since

then, it has raised its stake in Japan's top five trading firms

to around 9% each, according to its annual report in February.

It sold 263.3 billion yen of bonds in April.

"Berkshire's yen bond sales this year is the biggest in a

year since it started selling yen bonds and this indicates their

expectations for upside of Japanese stocks," said Takehiko

Masuzawa, trading head of Phillip Securities Japan.

"The market is looking at what kind of stocks will be their

next target. Investors see value stocks which pay higher

dividends, such as banks and insurers, will be the most likely

targets."

Buffett's optimism on Japan has helped attract other foreign

investors and send the benchmark Nikkei index to a

record high this year. The index has risen 17.7% so far in 2024.

In the latest deal, Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A ) issued bonds with

tenors of 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, 28 and 30 years, according to the

term sheet.

The 3-year tranche was the largest with 155.4 billion yen

raised. The 5-year bond raised 58 billion yen.

Longer-dated bonds were added during the transaction and a

proposed 15-year tranche was dropped, messages sent from the

deal's bookrunners showed.

Final prices for each of the tranches were set at the lower

to middle end of the revised price guidance given to investors,

term sheets showed.

($1 = 149.1500 yen)

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Junko Fujita in

Tokyo; Editing by Jamie Freed, Jacqueline Wong and Muralikumar

Anantharaman)