Berkshire Hathaway buys US$813m Bank of America stock

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought roughly US$813 million worth of Bank of America Corp. stock, piling more funds into the lender that’s facing a 31 percent slump so far this year, Bloomberg reports.

Berkshire purchased roughly 33.9 million of the bank’s shares this week, boosting its stake by more than 3 percent to about 981.7 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday. Buffett’s conglomerate added the shares at an average price of US$23.99.

Berkshire’s Bank of America stake, which started from preferred stock and warrants, has transformed into one of the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate’s largest holdings. At the end of March, the stake was Berkshire’s second-largest by market value, behind just Apple Inc. Buffett applied last year to the Federal Reserve to get permission to boost the stake in the lender to more than 10 percent, a level that tends to trigger regulatory review.