A $15 billion sell-off? Berkshire dumped ex-Buffett associate's portfolio, WSJ learns

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has liquidated positions in the portfolio for which investment manager Todd Combs was responsible, who will move to a competitor at the end of 2025. The exact scope and structure of this sell-off won't be known until May. According to Barron's, shares of companies from the technology, financial and retail sectors worth up to $15 billion could be affected.

The new head of Berkshire Greg Abel, who will succeed Buffett in January 2026, has sold a stake in the company, which until his departure from the company at the end of 2025 was managed by Todd Combs, reported The Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper's interlocutors, Berkshire has no plans to hire a new investment manager.

Before his firing, Combs managed about 5% of Berkshire Hathaway's entire equity portfolio, which has a combined value of $300 billion, so the "oracle of Omaha" investment firm may have sold about $15 billion worth of stock in the first quarter of this year, Barron's calculated.

Shares of such American corporations as online retailer and cloud giant Amazon, alcohol manufacturer Constellation Brands, supermarket chain Kroger, domain zone ".com" administrator VeriSign, fintech bank Capital One Financial, as well as payment systems Visa and Mastercard, according to Barron's, could likely fall under the sale with a high degree of probability. Berkshire's position in each of these companies is estimated at $3 billion, the publication points out.

Market observers have long speculated that it was Combs who oversaw Berkshire's investment in Amazon. Indirect confirmation of this speculation is the sharp decline in Berkshire's equity stake in Amazon by nearly 80% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The sale of Constellation Brands and Pool shares in the same quarter also hints that Combs was in charge of them. Since he was considered a specialist in technology sector investments at Berkshire, he may have been responsible for the VeriSign stake as well, Barron's suggests.

Berkshire will release general data on stock purchases and sales on Ma. 2 as part of its first-quarter financial report on Form 10-Q. More detailed information will be available in mid-Ma: the holding company, along with other large institutional investors, will disclose Form 13-F, which will include all transactions in specific securities from January through March.

Combs, who had long served as one of Buffett's chief investment managers, left Berkshire in December 2025 for a senior position at investment bank JPMorgan Chase. A massive selloff in Amazon's securities, which began in the fourth quarter, could have begun immediately after his firing. Berkshire Hathaway has followed similar uncompromising tactics before: about 15 years ago, the company got rid of shares managed by investment manager Lou Simpson shortly after he left his post, Barron's recalls.

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