Berkshire-backed stock gets boost

Shares of Axalta Coating Systems ended today at $29.99, up more than 16% from their Tuesday close. The company announced early Wednesday that its board has "initiated a comprehensive review of strategic alternatives, including a potential sale of the Company, changes in capital allocation, and ongoing execution of our strategic plan."

Berkshire Hathaway is Axalta's biggest shareholder, with a 10.3% stake now worth $727.7 million, according to CNBC's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

That's fairly small by Berkshire standings, coming in as the 30th largest stake by market value out of the 47 publicly-traded U.S. securities in Berkshire's most recent SEC disclosure.

Buffett slips further into fourth place 

After losing third place in April on the "real-time" version of Forbes' list of the world's richest people, Warren Buffett has fallen further into fourth place.

With an estimated net worth of $99.9 billion, LVMH's Bernard Arnault is poised to join Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos ($157 billion) and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($103 billion) in the extremely exclusive club of centibillionaires. (It isn't even a word yet in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, which only goes up to centimillionaires.)

Buffett's current net worth is estimated at $85 billion, $15 billion behind Arnault and $14 billion more than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's $71 billion.

When the annual Forbes billionaires list was published in early March, Buffett was ahead of Arnault, $82.5 billion to $76 billion. 

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares closed at $309,000 Friday, up 2.0% over the previous four weeks, and up 7.8% from one year ago.

Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares closed at $206.21, up 2.2% over the previous four weeks, and up 9.2% from one year ago.

The benchmark S&P 500 index closed at 2950.46, up 4.4% over the previous four weeks, and up 7.1% from one year ago.

BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS 

Berkshire's top stock holdings by market value, based on today's closing prices. The number of shares held is as of March 31, 2019, as disclosed in the company's May 15 13F SEC filing.

USG Corporation (USG) was listed in the 13-F filing (39,002,016 shares) but is not included in this table because the stock is no longer trading following the April completion of the company's acquisition by Knauf.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

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