BofA’s Moynihan: ‘I don’t know what Warren Buffett is doing selling BofA stock’

Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan said he doesn’t exactly know what Warren Buffett is doing by selling BofA stocks, “because, frankly, we can’t ask him.”

During the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference on Tuesday, Brian Moynihan, Bank of America’s chair and CEO, said that he doesn’t know what the Berkshire Hathaway chair is doing selling BofA stocks.

Buffett is Bank of America’s biggest shareholder, with a stake of about 11%. He made two large investments in the bank.

The first was a $5B investment in 2011 during the post-financial crisis and U.S. debt ceiling crisis. With that, he got 700M shares at $7.14 per share, and the right to exercise the stock warrants anytime over the next 10 years. He exercised them in 2017, when the shares were worth more than $20B.

In 2019, he increased his shares by 2.5%, about 22.8M shares.

He has been trimming his stake in the bank, currently investing about $7B, according to LSEG data.

Regardless, Moynihan said Buffett has been a great investor in the company who “stabilized our economy.”