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Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway Busy in 3rd Quarter

Warren Buffet's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway had quite a busy third quarter.  The company's stock portfolio filing for the quarter shows that Berkshire acquired a significant stake in the Bank of New York Mellon during the period.  The filing shows that Berkshire is holding two million shares of the bank worth about $55 million ($28 per share) as of the market's close on Monday. 

The filing also showed moves made by the company to unload a number of stocks which appeared in Berkshire's 2nd quarter filing but are now gone. They are:

Home Depot: 2.76 million shares, now worth $86.6 million, sold.
Republic Services: 10.8 million shares, now worth $306.9 million, sold.
Carmax: 7.73 million shares, now worth $254.0 million, sold.
Iron Mountain: 8 million shares, now worth $182.5 million, sold.
NRG Energy: 6 million shares, now worth $118.8 million, sold.

Several of these former Berkshire holdings are believed to have been purchased by GEICO investment manager Lou Simpson, who is stepping down at the end of the year.

Berkshire's filing also reports the following reductions in stake in various companies:

Comcast: stake cut by 98% to 186,897 shares from 12,000,000 shares.
11,813,103 shares, now worth $228.3 million, sold.  (General Electric and Comcast have an agreement to create a joint venture that will include CNBC.  It awaits government approval.)
Ingersoll Rand: stake cut by 89% to 636,600 shares from 5,636,600 shares.
5,000,000 shares, now worth $211 million, sold.
Nike: stake cut by 52% to 3,642,929 shares from 7,641,000 shares.
3,998,071 shares, now worth $327 million, sold.
Nalco Holding: stake cut by 33% to 6,142,300 shares from 9,150,000 shares.
3,007,700 shares, now worth $89.7 million, sold.
Fiserv: stake cut by 11% to 3,910,800 shares from 4,400,000 shares.
489,200 shares, now worth $27.1 million, sold.
Moody's: stake cut by 6% to 28,873,756 shares from 30,783,876 shares.
1,910,120 shares, now worth $53.3 million, sold.
Procter & Gamble: stake cut by 2% to 76,766,036 shares from 78,071,036 shares. 1,305,000 shares, now worth $83.9 million, sold.

But not all of Berkshire's third-quarter moves reduced its portfolio.  The company also increased its stake in Wells Fargo during the period, purchasing 16.3 million shares to bring its stake in the bank to 336.4 million shares, and increasing its stake in Johnson & Johnson by 3 percent through the purchase of an additional 1.3 million shares.