Buffett cut long-held holdings of J&J, P&G and Kraft Foods. Why? (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Berkshire Hathaway took the ax to some of the longest-held names in its stock portfolio last quarter, sparking questions over just how much sway Warren Buffett is sharing with his recently-installed investing colleagues.

to help manage a chunk of the firm’s approximately $75 billion equity portfolio. Both managers were expected to start small and gradually manage more and more of the company’s holdings until ultimately taking over whenever Buffett steps down.

An SEC filing Tuesday detailing Berkshire’s portfolio at the close of the second quarter revealed significant cuts to holdings in Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods, all stalwarts of Buffett’s portfolio.

Deal Journal’s Erik Holm says the cuts may represent a changing of the guard to some small degree, with Buffett sharing more investing responsibility with his younger colleagues:

The moves, disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday, reveal an uncommonly active quarter for Berkshire leader Warren Buffett and Berkshire’s new portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler.…

Tom Russo, a longtime Berkshire shareholder who manages more than $5 billion as a partner at Gardner Russo & Gardner, theorized that Buffett was selling off the positions to allocate more capital to Combs and Weschler, who are expected to take on ever-larger slices of Berkshire’s investment portfolio in coming years.

The cuts were substantial, and did come from some of the biggest positions in the Berkshire portfolio: J&J, P&G and Kraft were three of 14 equity positions worth more than a billion dollars at the end of 2011. Positions of that size are assumed to be Buffett’s bailiwick, considering the Oracle of Omaha told  shareholders earlier this year that his two deputies each had their mandates raised by a billion dollars and manage about $2.75 billion.

At recent prices, and with the caveat that it is quite possible Berkshire’s positions have changed since June 30, Buffett holds $706 million worth of J&J, just under $4 billion in P&G and $2.4 billion in Kraft. Those positions were cut by two-thirds, a fifth and a quarter from March 31. But it is not a guarantee that the cash raised from paring those stakes found its way into the baskets of Combs and Weschler

While the logic makes sense, another longtime Berkshire shareholder, money manager and Forbes contributor Martin Sosnoff, thinks the portfolio reduction – the overall equity portfolio was trimmed to $74.3 billion from $75.3 billion — might mean Buffett is readying another big acquisition along the lines of his 2010 takeover of Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Sosnoff, who manages $6 billion at Atalanta Sosnoff Capital writes that while Buffett may be conserving capital in the face of ”investment waters filled with riptides ,” he thinks there is just as good a chance the world’s third-richest man is readying for one last mega-play, another opportunity to step up to the plate when few others can or will. Remember, Buffett also stepped up with sorely-needed capital in 2008 for Goldman Sachs Group and General Electric — bets that paid off handsomely — and again in 2011 for Bank of America.