Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway exited a bet on Synchrony Financial during the first quarter as the company continued to pare back its investments in financial firms.
Berkshire reported Monday that it no longer held any shares in Synchrony, a bet that had totaled nearly $699 million at year-end, and trimmed its Wells Fargo holding to just over 675,000 shares as of March 31. It added shares in the insurance broker Aon, which is seeking to close a deal with rival Willis Towers Watson.
Warren Buffett.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Buffett’s company has spent the last year revamping its holdings in financial firms, sticking by a massive stake in Bank of America valued at $39.1 billion, while exiting investments in JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group. A more than three-decade investment in Wells Fargo, which once ranked as the company’s largest common stock bet, has been slowly disappearing in recent years and totaled just $26.4 million at the end of the first quarter.
Meanwhile, Berkshire has dug even deeper into the insurance brokerage industry. The bet on Aon, disclosed in a quarterly filing, comes just months after Berkshire revealed a stake in its rival Marsh McLennan. Aon and Willis Towers Watson have agreed to sell some assets to help ease regulatory concerns around their proposed combination. The Aon holding was valued at about $943 million at the end of the first quarter.
In February, Berkshire disclosed three bets, including the Marsh McLennan stake, that it had been building up in secret. The company then spent the first quarter taking those bets in different directions, ramping up its stake in Marsh McLennan and Verizon Communications while cutting a Chevron holding roughly in half.
Buffett and two of his key deputies, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, oversee investments for the conglomerate’s $282 billion stock portfolio. The firm ended up increasing two other bets — a stake in Kroger and a holding in the furniture company RH — during the first quarter.
The online consumer lender beat revenue expectations in the first quarter, but its net income was dragged down by larger provisions that the company attributed to tariff "uncertainty."
The card processor came up short on expected profits but hit analysts' estimates on revenue in the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. CEO Ryan McInerney said growth in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions were strong even in the face of shaky economic conditions.
At a House subcommittee hearing, Republicans proposed "tailoring" regulations for community banks while Democrats railed against Trump's tariffs and cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Financial Services Committee ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., urged the National Credit Union Administration's Inspector general to look into President Trump's removal of two board members.
Rapid deregulation, tariffs and a campaign to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have defined the early days of President Donald Trump's second term for bankers.
