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Buffett’s Big Short

The Oracle of Omaha, presumably pissed that his underlings did the Paramount deal in the first place, is cutting his losses and apparently voting with his feet on a sale process run by his old banker, Byron Trott. Plus: Peltz’s defeat.

During the fourth quarter of 2023, Warren Buffett sold 30.4 million shares of Paramount, or about one-third of his stake in the company.
During the fourth quarter of 2023, Warren Buffett sold 30.4 million shares of Paramount, or about one-third of his stake in the company. Photo: Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage
William D. Cohan
February 18, 2024

There are few more painful harbingers of a sullied M&A process than what befell Paramount Global last week: the announcement that two of the company’s largest institutional shareholders had unloaded stock at that fraught moment between deal rumor-mongering and the announcement of any such deal. In other words, they sold before the stock traded up after an agreed-upon sale. That’s pretty unusual.