Wintergreen Advisers LLC, the firm run by David Winters, exited its stake in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. after criticizing Warren Buffett for not voting against an executive compensation plan at Coca-Cola Co.
Wintergreen held no shares in Omaha-based Berkshire at the end of June, according to a regulatory filing issued Thursday. Winters’ firm had 1.2 million Class B shares on March 31, when the stake was valued at about $151 million, a separate filing shows.
Winters this year waged a campaign to persuade investors to reject Coke’s executive-pay proposal, calling it a “raw deal” for shareholders. He appealed to Buffett to oppose the plan, because Berkshire is the soft-drink maker’s largest investor. Buffett didn’t speak publicly about the plan until after it passed, when he said he had abstained from voting.
“As a longtime shareholder of Berkshire, Mr. Buffett’s words and actions (or more aptly, inactions) regarding Coke’s 2014 equity plan did not sit well with us,” Winters said Friday in an e-mailed statement. “We no longer felt that Warren Buffett was looking out for his shareholders’ interests.”
