Who Sold Warren Buffett His Dow Jones Stake?/ Buffett's Obama Fundraiser Coverage Tonight
By: Alex Crippen | Executive Producer
One of the more interesting aspects of last night's Berkshire Hathaway portfolio filing is the appearance of just under 3 million shares of Dow Jones stock. Buffett is no stranger to the newspaper biz, with investments in the Washintgon Post and Gannett. But lately he's been talking about the challenges the industry faces from the Internet. And while his name was mentioned as a possible white-knight against Ruper Murdoch's ultimately successful attempt to acquire the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, it didn't appear at the time that the talk went anywhere.
In fact, he did buy the roughly 3% stake in Dow Jones between March 31 and June 30, about the same time the battle over the Journal's future was raging. And today's Journal reports Buffett bought the 2.78 million shares from the family that controlled Dow Jones for more than a century, the Bancrofts.
We don't know how much he paid for the stock, but presumably the price is below the $60/share that Murdoch's News Corp. will be paying the the deal closes. Right now:
BUFFETT'S OBAMA FUND RAISER TONIGHT - REAL-TIME COVERAGE HERE ON WARREN BUFFETT WATCH
Last week, we posted on Warren Buffett's plans to co-host a fundraiser for Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. It happens tonight (Wednesday, August 15) at 8:30 PM Eastern. CNBC has Squawk Box anchor Becky Quick and CNBC producer Lacy O'Toole in Omaha for the event. There's no live video allowed, but Warren Buffett Watch will be posting frequent, real-time text updates from the Quick/O'Toole team all this evening. Video clips will be posted when they become available.
Remember, Buffett's appearance tonight does NOT mean he's endorsing Obama over Hillary Clinton. Buffett hosted a Clinton fundraiser in June (where he made some headlines with a call to increase taxes on the wealthy) and has said repeatedly that both Clinton and Obama would make great Presidents of the United States. Of course, at some point he may have to choose.
Questions? Comments? Email me at buffettwatch@cnbc.com
