Buffett Throws in the Towel: Berkshire Hathaway Exit Marks End of an Era
At 94, the Oracle of Omaha finally admits what Wall Street’s been whispering for years—even legends have an expiration date.
No more folksy annual letters or cherry Coke analogies. The man who built a $900B empire on ’buy and hold’ just held his own exit door.
Funny how these ’permanent’ fixtures always seem to retire right before the next financial crisis hits. Convenient timing—or another masterclass in beating the market?
Buffett shocked shareholders by naming Greg Abel as new CEO
On May 3, during the final part of Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Warren said he WOULD step down as CEO in December. He announced it casually, right near the end of the Q&A, and the room froze. Then people clapped. Even Greg, who was on stage with him, didn’t know the announcement was coming. It hit everybody at once.
Warren will still stay on as chairman of the board, and he hasn’t set a date to leave that job. He said he still comes into the office every day and enjoys being around the people there. “My health is fine, in the sense that I feel good every day,” he said. “I’m here at the office and I get to work with people I love, that they like me pretty well, and we have a good time.”
Greg, who’s now 62, got to Berkshire when Warren invested in MidAmerican Energy in 1999. The company was based in Des Moines, Iowa, and Greg had a strong track record there. Warren eventually made him vice chairman in 2018, letting him oversee all noninsurance operations.
By 2021, Greg had been selected as Warren’s future replacement, over his own biological children, who, by the way, fully support the decision.
Warren explained the decision by saying, “Really great talent is rare. It’s rare in business. It’s rare in capital allocation. It’s rare in almost every human activity you can name.” He added that Greg just got more done in a single day than he could.
“The difference in energy level and just how much he could accomplish in a 10-hour day compared to what I could accomplish in a 10-hour day—the difference became more and more dramatic,” said Warren. “He just was so much more effective at getting things done, making changes in management where they were needed, helping people that needed help someplace, but just all kinds of ways.”
Buffett says he’ll still be around as Abel prepares to lead
Warren said it felt unfair to delay Greg’s promotion any longer. “It was unfair, really, not to put Greg in the job,” he said. “The more years that Berkshire gets out of Greg, the better.”
Warren first took control of Berkshire in 1965 when it was just a failing textile company. He was 34 at the time. Now, nearly 60 years later, the company owns insurance businesses, utilities, a major railroad, and famous brands like Dairy Queen and Duracell. Its stock portfolio is huge, with major holdings in Apple and American Express. Today, Berkshire has about 400,000 employees.
He said the company has changed, and the job has changed with it. What’s needed now is someone who can MOVE fast, talk to multiple teams, and manage it all at scale. That’s where Greg comes in.
Warren doesn’t think of himself as someone who should lead forever. “I thought I would remain CEO as long as I thought I was more useful than anybody else, in terms of being CEO,” he said. “And it surprised me, you know, how long it went.”
Even now, Warren still feels sharp when it comes to investing. He said, “I don’t have any trouble making decisions about something that I was making decisions on 20 years ago or 40 years ago or 60 years. I will be useful here if there’s a panic in the market because I don’t get fearful when things go down in price or everybody else gets scared. And that really isn’t a function of age.”
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