Wednesday was a trending day for Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) after Berkshire Hathaway shared that 7.134 million of the bank's shares were sold between April 10 and 12. Further to those 7 million shares, Berkshire also plans to divest an additional 1.865 million shares at some point in the future. Berkshire is selling because under federal regulations, the holdings of any single shareholder of a large bank must be below 10% and Buffet's company had owned 479 million shares at the end of last year. The selling is not because it is bearish on the bank. This works well good for the Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) bulls. Since Wels Fargo was re-buying its stock, Berkshire's holdings did increase over the 10% limit, so Buffett's firm sold to stay within the limit.
In a recent press release, Berkshire shared that just over a year ago, Wells Fargo's repurchases of the common stock increased Berkshire's interest in Wells Fargo to over 10%. Therefore, a Notice of Change in Control was filed by Berkshire with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He further stated that there was no initial intention to purchase additional Wells Fargo shares but it was recognized that the ownership interest would continue to grow if Wells Fargo continued to purchase shares. Berkshire added that it took several months of discussions with the Federal Reserve representatives and it was learned that retaining more than 10% of Wells Fargo's common stock would impede commercial activity with the bank. The solution, therefore, was to keep the ownership interest under 10%. Presently, Berkshire has no intention to sell more Wells Fargo stock beyond the mandated 10%.
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