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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said late Friday that it plans to borrow roughly $8 billion to help the company pay for its acquisition of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

Berkshire agreed earlier this week to pay $26 billion for the rest of Burlington it doesn't already own. The company is paying 60% of that with cash and the rest with Berkshire stock. See story on Berkshire's biggest deal ever.

In a regulatory filing late Friday, Berkshire said it "expects to fund about 50% of the total cash consideration of approximately $16 billion with internally generated cash and the remainder with borrowings expected to be repaid over a three-year period."

Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett is known for shunning debt, and during the credit boom earlier this decade he criticized private-equity firms, which specialize in leveraged buyouts.

At the height of the market boom, Berkshire had amassed more than $40 billion in cash. However, Buffett has been putting a lot of that money to work since the financial crisis triggered a stock-market slump last year.

By the end of September, Berkshire had $23.84 billion in cash and cash equivalents. That probably made it impossible to pay for the $26 billion Burlington deal with just the funds at hand.

After the deal was announced, Standard & Poor's warned that it may cut Berkshire's AAA ratings on concern cash will be pulled out of the company's insurance subsidiaries.

"This transaction will decrease the liquidity and capital adequacy of the insurance operations," Standard & Poor's credit analyst John Iten said. "For the consolidated organization, financial leverage will increase."

Buffett's decision to acquire Burlington Northern , despite having to borrow money, suggests he was more keen than normal to do the deal. Indeed, he called the acquisitions an "all-in wager" on the U.S. economy.