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<\/div>\nWarren Buffett, who built Berkshire Hathaway Inc. into a business valued at more than $1.16 trillion and himself into a celebrity billionaire renowned for his investing acumen and witticisms, will step down at year-end after six decades atop the conglomerate.<\/p>\n
Greg Abel, the vice chairman for non-insurance operations, will take charge of the conglomerate upon board approval, Buffett, 94, said Saturday at the company\u2019s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. He said the board plans to meet on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The announcement stunned the board and even Abel, who, while long signaled as Buffett\u2019s successor, was unaware that the news was coming as the annual meeting drew to a close.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the news hook for the day,\u201d Buffett said. \u201cThanks for coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berkshire grew aggressively over the decades with Buffett as chairman and CEO, as he chose acquisitions and stocks for the company portfolio alongside trusted adviser and vice chairman, Charlie Munger, who died in 2023 at 99. The conglomerate acquired a bewildering assortment of businesses, which Buffett often said mirrored the US economy as a whole. A bet on Berkshire, he said, was a bet on America.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is Berkshire\u2019s oyster \u2014 a world offering us a range of opportunities far beyond those realistically open to most companies,\u201d Buffett said in his annual letter released in 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n Buffett had the ear of fellow CEOs and some presidents, and was able to draw a crowd of tens of thousands of shareholders to Omaha every year for the annual meeting.<\/p>\n His investing success, a 20% compounded annual gain in Berkshire stock between 1965 and 2024, compared with about 10% for the S&P 500, gave him the power to move stocks and helped him strike lucrative deals with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and General Electric Co. during times of crisis.<\/p>\n Buffett started managing money when he was young, a disciple of Benjamin Graham\u2019s investing style. He moved more into the corporate world when his Buffett Partnership Ltd. bought shares of Berkshire. In 1965, he took control of the rest of the business.<\/p>\n Composed mostly of struggling textile operations that would eventually fade away, Berkshire became the foundation for Buffett\u2019s modern-day giant. Piece by piece, he built and acquired operations into a varied set of industries, including insurance \u2014 which gave him cash, or \u201cfloat\u201d \u2014 to help his investing strategy.<\/p>\n Now, Berkshire owns businesses ranging from railroad BNSF to auto insurer Geico, sprawling energy operations, and even retailers such as Dairy Queen and See\u2019s Candies. Its collection of companies generated $47.4 billion<\/a> of annual operating earnings in 2024. Buffett also built up the stock portfolio \u2014 populating it with giant bets on the likes of Apple Inc. and American Express \u2014 and offering Berkshire another way to participate in the gains of businesses that it didn\u2019t fully own.<\/p>\n \u2018All-In Wager\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n When Buffett agreed to buy BNSF for $26 billion in 2009, he called the deal an \u201call-in wager on the economic future of the United States.\u201d The billionaire rarely missed a chance to extol the prospects of the US economy.<\/p>\n An \u201call-powerful trend\u201d toward more productivity made the country great, he wrote in a 2015 annual letter. Over the course of his lifetime, the nation\u2019s economic output had risen sixfold per capita, \u201ca leap far beyond the wildest dreams of my parents or their contemporaries,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Abel, 62, a longtime Buffett deputy, will be taking over a healthy business. While Berkshire just reported first-quarter operating earnings declined 14% to $9.6 billion after heavy losses in its insurance unit related to California wildfires, its increased holdings of Treasury bills helped lift investment income.<\/p>\n Scarce Deals<\/strong><\/p>\n During the pandemic, Buffett was stymied on the dealmaking front due to high valuations for good businesses, leaving a swollen cash pile and few attractive opportunities to put money to work. Instead of deals, Buffett leaned into share buybacks to deploy capital, though he broke with that trend by completing a $11.6 billion acquisition of Alleghany Corp. in 2022.<\/p>\n Last year, he decried a lack of meaningful deals that would give the firm a shot at \u201ceye-popping performance\u201d as Berkshire\u2019s cash pile hit yet another record. The few US companies capable of moving the needle at Berkshire had already been \u201cendlessly picked over by us and by others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Since then, as the billionaire cut his stakes in Apple and Bank of America Corp. while refraining from making major deals, Berkshire\u2019s cash pile kept piling up, reaching $347.7 billion as of March 31.<\/p>\n There were also some occasional missteps. Buffett conceded he paid too much for aerospace-equipment maker Precision Castparts, a deal that forced a $10 billion writedown in 2020. And Buffett and Munger were famously late to seeing value in technology stocks, though they later accelerated purchases of Apple shares.<\/p>\n Still, his long-term track record has attracted fans for years. At the annual meetings held in a crowded Omaha sports arena, he and Munger would opine on topics ranging from stock markets to cryptocurrency and even life and success. The annual event, nicknamed Woodstock for Capitalists, and his widely read annual letter both played into the investor\u2019s fascination with teaching others.<\/p>\n Fans of the billionaire often quote his more-memorable quips. Buffett pulled out one of his chestnuts again in 2018 on the question of whether troubled Wells Fargo & Co. \u2014 then a longtime Berkshire investment \u2014 might uncover additional wrongdoing: \u201cThere\u2019s never just one cockroach in the kitchen.\u201d And of over-leveraged financial firms during the worldwide crisis in 2008 he had this to say: \u201cYou only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Buffett\u2019s large following, his day-to-day management of Berkshire was simple. He long favored a decentralized management approach, allowing the heads of Berkshire\u2019s various businesses to run the operations how they deemed fit and checking in on the operations every now and then.<\/p>\n Buffett considered one of his more important roles to be a capital allocator for Berkshire, figuring out where the money should go, and reportedly spent a lot of time reading in his corporate office in Omaha. That office had just 27 employees as of last year.<\/p>\n \u201cBuffett\u2019s decision to limit his activities to a few kinds and to maximize his attention to them, and to keep doing so for 50 years, was a lollapalooza,\u201d Munger said in an annual letter. \u201cBuffett succeeded for the same reason Roger Federer became good at tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Warren Buffett. Photographer: Andrew Harrer\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n Topics<\/span> Trends<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n