Thursday, February 3, 2011

BlackRock Discloses 6.6% Berkshire Hathaway Class B Stake (BRK.B; BLK)

The hell you say.
From CNBC:
BlackRock logo
BlackRock
, the big money management firm led by Laurence Fink, held 6.6 percent of Berkshire Hathaway's Class B shares at the end of December.
A filing with the SEC tonight reports that as of December 31, 2010, BlackRock "beneficially owned" 68,430,861 Berkshire Class B shares.  The 13G form used for the disclosure indicates BlackRock is a passive investor.
At today's closing price of $82.45, the shares would have a market value of $5.6 billion.
That appears to be an increase.  CNBC.com's list of top institutional holders of Berkshire Bs, which doesn't take this latest filing into account, has BlackRock owning 53.4 million shares, about 5.1 percent of shares outstanding.
Warren Buffett is listed as owning 50.4 million shares, or 4.9% of those outstanding.  But that's just his Class B holdings.  He also has almost 37 percent of the higher-prices Class A shares, a position worth almost $42 billion....