When berkshire hathaway ceo Warren Buffett revealed in a late-August filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that his conglomerate held a 10.8 percent stake in Phillips 66 Co., worth some $4.5 billion, the development was somewhat surprising on two fronts. First, itwasonly in February 2014 that Buffett had swapped a big chunk of Phillips 66 stock for the Houston-based oil refiner's specialty products division, which he folded into Berkshire Hathaway's Lubrizol Corp. chemical subsidiary. So that was a quick about-face. Second, despite the fact that Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway had built its stake well past the 5 percent threshold that requires an investor to notify the SEC of its position, that information was not publicly disclosed until well after the fact. Less than two weeks earlier, Berkshire had filed a statement listing its portfolio holdings that read: "Confidential information has been omitted from the public Form 13F report and filed separately with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."
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