Investor Warren Buffett has sold his firm's entire holdings in the four major US airlines, The Guardian reports.
Speaking at the annual (online) meeting of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett, who is 89, said that "the world has changed" adding that he expected things to get worse on the stock markets before they got better.
In the 2008 recession, Buffett provided a measure of financial support for markets when he bought shares in Goldman Sachs, but this time he admitted that he hadn't done the same, as he saw nothing "attractive" enough to tempt him. "We made that decision in terms of the airline business. We took money out of the business basically even at a substantial loss," Buffett said at the meeting. "We will not fund a company … where we think that it is going to chew up money in the future.”
The Guardian noted that Berkshire Hathaway had held an 11% stake in Delta Air Lines, 10% of American Airlines, 10% of Southwest Airlines and 9% of United Airlines at the end of 2019, according to its annual report and company filings.