Berkshire Hathaway fine-tunes its portfolio
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which bought texas-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, restructured its portfolio, which rose about 2.4 per cent in value during the quarter December quarter to about $58 billion. In the 13-F regulatory filing with the SEC, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported reduced stake in Johnson & Johnson - the world's largest maker of health-care products, and Procter & Gamble - No. 1 consumer Products Company to fund its acquisition of BNSF worth $26 billion, the largest ever for The Oracle of Omaha. Berkshire also pared interest in Exxon Mobil Corp., SunTrust Banks Inc., Ingersoll-Rand Plc, Gannett Co., UnitedHealth Group Inc., CarMax Inc. and WellPoint Inc. Two noticeable moves during the past quarter were to more than double its holdings in Iron Mountain Inc. and Republic Services to seven million and 8.3 million shares respectively. Buffett continues to dump shares of rating agency Moody's and his investment vehicle current owns 31.8 million at the end of 2009, he reported another small sale in February. Buffett added more than one million shares to his Wal-Mart Stores Inc. taking the total holdings to 37.8 million at December 2009.