Buffett accused of hypocrisy for personally owning some stocks also in Berkshire’s portfolio
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Warren Buffett “has sometimes said one thing in public and done another in private” by selling stocks from his personal portfolio that Berkshire Hathaway has also bought or sold around the same time, according to a report published Thursday by ProPublica, which describes itself as a “nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.”
It says Buffett’s sales “may violate Berkshire’s ethics policies, authored by Buffett himself, which require ‘all actual and anticipated securities transactions of Berkshire’ be publicly disclosed before Berkshire employees can trade the stocks personally.”
It also notes that Buffett said at the 2012 Berkshire annual meeting that “I can’t be buying what Berkshire is buying.”
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(He was explaining why he had bought JPMorgan shares for his personal account at the same time Berkshire was building its position in rival bank Wells Fargo.
“The truth is I like Wells Fargo better than I like J.P. Morgan but I — but I also — we bought, and we’re buying, Wells Fargo stock, and that takes me out of the business of buying Wells Fargo. So therefore, I go into something that I don’t like quite as well but that I still like very much.”
He said he also sometimes buys “into tiny little companies” that are too small to have a meaningful impact at Berkshire.
“But my best ideas are all in Berkshire. That I can promise you…”)
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