Here's How Much the Wells Fargo Scandal Cost Warren Buffett
Money is not a client of any investment adviser featured on this page. The information provided on this page is for educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Money does not offer advisory services.
Although Wells Fargo was slapped with $185 million in fines for opening roughly 2 million unauthorized checking and credit card accounts, the one who really lost big was Warren Buffett. The famous investor lost $1.4 billion when the bank's stock fell on Tuesday.
Other billionaire investors also lost money in market fallout of the Wells Fargo mess, according to Bloomberg, but the fall was especially painful for Warren Buffett because most of his billions are tied up in his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, which is Wells Fargo's biggest shareholder. When the share price of Wells Fargo fell by more than 3%, Berkshire Hathaway's own stock also fell.
It's been a rough week for Buffett. Last Friday, a New York company sued Berkshire Hathaway for $18 million, claiming that a worker's comp insurance policy it purchased was actually a high-risk investment that left the company on the hook for nearly $900,000.
Don't feel too bad for the Oracle of Omaha though: Buffett's net worth is still nearly $66 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index. That makes him the 4th richest person on the plaent, behind Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega and Jeff Bezos.