Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sells off 1.7 million shares in Gannett, worth about US$38M, purchases about US$23M worth of shares in direct-broadcast satellite service the Dish Network

Kendall Sinclair

LONDON , August 16, 2013 (Guardian Web ) – Warren Buffett may have faith in the future of newspapers, having recently bought dozens of them, but he appears to feel differently about America's largest newspaper publisher.

His investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, has sold off 1.7m shares in the US publishing chain Gannett, which were worth about $38m (£24.3m).

According to Berkshire's latest filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission for the second quarter (up to 30 June), the company said it no longer held the Gannett stock it owned in the first quarter.

Buffett is bullish about papers. In his annual letter to shareholders in March, he and his business partner, Charlie Munger, spoke of newspapers having a viable future.

But Buffett - the largest outside investor in the Washington Post Company with 1.8m shares - didn't step in to buy that company either. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos snapped it up instead.

Berkshire also purchased shares in the direct-broadcast satellite service, the Dish Network, worth about $23m (£14.7m). It already holds stock valued at $1.3bn (£830m) in Dish's rival cable company, DirecTV. There has been speculation that the two rivals may merge.

Source: CNN

(c) 2013 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.