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

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

seven-tranche yen-denominated bond deal, its largest sale in the

Japanese currency in five years, a term sheet reviewed by

Reuters on Thursday showed.

The yen bond issue signals Buffett's deepening association

with Japan's capital markets after its equity stake buys in the

nation's top-5 trading houses over the past four years.

The U.S. investment company 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.

The deal was the largest yen-denominated bond issuance for

Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A ) since 2019 when it first issued yen, or

Samurai, bonds

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 dated Feb. 24.

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."

($1 = 149.1500 yen)

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Junko Fujita in

Tokyo; Editing by Jamie Freed, Jacqueline Wong and Muralikumar

Anantharaman)