Billionaire Warren Buffett will remain with Berkshire Hathaway as chairman of the board when vice chairman Greg Abel takes over as CEO to begin 2026.
The board of directors at the cash-rich conglomerate voted Sunday to keep the legendary 94-year-old investor as head of the board, a decision likely to relieve investors worried about Berkshire’s remarkable winning streak as the U.S. and global economies are beset by tariff shocks, financial turmoil and a growing risk of recession.
The board in the same meeting also approved Buffett’s chosen successor as CEO, veteran Berkshire executive Greg Abel, 62. In a surprise announcement Saturday, Buffett said he would step down from that top spot at the end of the year.
Berkshire Class B shares fell more than 5% Monday after hitting an all-time high on Friday.
Macrae Sykes, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, praised the transparent way Buffett announced the transition at the meeting and believes investors can have confidence that he isn’t going anywhere.
“Retaining the position of Chairman means he can continue to mentor Greg and the Berkshire leaders, while also providing additional intellectual capacity when the inevitable time for more major capital allocation occurs,” Sykes said.
In six decades at the helm, Buffett turned a Massachusetts textile company into a sprawling but nimble conglomerate that owns everything from Daily Queen and See’s Candies to BNSF Railway and giant insurers. As the company grew, Warren’s reputation grew with it as shares of Berkshire Hathaway climbed steadily, exceeding major indexes by wide margins and returning an average 19.9% each year versus 10.4% for the Standard & Poor’s 500.
The decision to continue with the Oracle of Omaha, as Buffet is known, as head of the board differs from the succession plan laid out for after Buffett’s death. The billionaire has long said that Howard Buffett, the second-born of the investor’s three children, should become chairman when he is gone to protect Berkshire’s culture.
A current vice-chairman, Abel, will take over as CEO as big questions hover over the company, but he has already been managing all of Berkshire’s non-insurance businesses since 2018. Buffett himself has said President Donald Trump’s tariffs were a big mistake. There are also worries that Berkshire might not able to avoid the fate of most conglomerates—forced to break up to recapture focus.
Then there is Berkshire’s $348 billion in cash.
Buffett says he doesn’t see many bargains to invest that money in now, not even Berkshire’s own stock, but assured some of the estimated 40,000 attendees of the company’s celebratory weekend annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, that one day the company would be “bombarded with opportunities.”
Abel, a low-key Canadian with a love a hockey, has already shown he is a more hands-on manager than Buffett by asking managers tough questions and encouraging them to collaborate with other subsidiaries when it makes sense. He will now take on oversight of the insurance businesses and responsibility for investing the company’s cash. Vice Chairman Ajit Jain will stay on for now to help manage the insurance businesses that include Geico and massive reinsurers like General Re, but he is 73.
Abel told shareholders Saturday that he wouldn’t change the Berkshire’s approach to investing, which he learned from Buffett. Maintaining Berkshire’s fortress-like balance sheet will always be a priority, he said.
Buffett endorsed Abel by saying he would keep all of his shares that give him control of 30% of Berkshire Hathaway and praised Abel during the shareholder meeting..
“It’s way better with Greg than with me because I didn’t want to work as hard as he works and I can get away with it because we’ve got a basically good business — a very good business — and I wasn’t in danger of you firing me by virtue of the ownership and the fact that we could do pretty well,” Buffett said. “But the fact that you can do pretty well doesn’t mean you couldn’t do better, and Greg can do better at many things.”
The CEOs of Berkshire subsidiaries who report to Abel have always praised his management style that holds them accountable while allowing them autonomy. See’s Candy CEO Pat Egan, who worked with Abel at Berkshire’s utility unit for years before he took over the candymaker six years ago, said Abel makes sure he’s considered every contingency.
“He’s allowed me to make a lot of decisions that he may or may not have agreed with, but he’ll support us at the end of the day, no matter what as long as we’re operating with integrity and principles and the long game,” Egan said.
Buffett has always delegated the decisions about how to distribute his fortune, worth nearly $170 billion today, to others by giving shares annually to the Gates Foundation and four family foundations run by his children.
The Gates Foundation has received the biggest donations worth more than $40 billion since he started giving away his fortune in 2006.
He said last summer that his three children will decide how to distribute his remaining fortune after his death but that the Gates Foundation won’t get any more donations at that point.
Howard, 70, has his own foundation through which he has donated billions to humanitarian and food security causes, including helping coffee farms in El Salvador and war-torn Ukraine. Howard Buffett’s foundation expects to top $1 billion in gifts to Ukraine — more than most countries — later this year.
Tributes to Buffett came tumbling in over the weekend praising his investment savvy and folksy management style.
“There’s never been someone like Warren, and countless people, myself included, have been inspired by his wisdom,” Apple CEO Tim Cook posted on X. “It’s been one of the great privileges of my life to know him.”
JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon said Buffett represented “everything that is good about American capitalism and America itself,” and praised his “integrity, optimism and common sense.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.