Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Hathaway Chair: ‘Father Time Always Wins’

Quick Read

• Warren Buffett, 96, steps down as Berkshire Hathaway chair, naming son Howard as cultural guardian and leaving Greg Abel to run the company as CEO.

• Abel has already deployed capital aggressively, closing OxyChem, buying Taylor Morrison, and structuring a private placement with Alphabet, with $380 billion still in cash.

• Read More: Avoid these 13 retirement mistakes before they derail your future (sponsor)

Berkshire Hathaway announced this morning that Warren Buffett is transitioning to chairman emeritus, effective immediately. He remains a director and a shareholder. His son Howard G. Buffett, who has served on the Berkshire board since 1993 per CNBC’s Becky Quick, becomes board chair. Greg Abel continues as chief executive officer, a role Quick noted he assumed on January 1. Sue Decker continues as lead independent director.

Abel runs the company. Howard Buffett holds the chairmanship and, in his father’s framing, guards the culture. In his letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett wrote, “I have served Berkshire since 1965, 60-plus years in, I still have the best job in the world.” He added: “Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me.” On his son’s new role, Buffett offered the best line of the letter: “Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.”

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) Class B shares traded at $509.02 in premarket, off 0.04% from Thursday’s close. Berkshire is up 1% since Abel became CEO, against a gain of more than 11% for the S&P 500 over the same stretch.

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Abel has already been operating independently, closing the OxyChem acquisition, buying Taylor Morrison, taking a stake in Tokio Marine, and structuring a private placement with Alphabet. Watch for capital deployment from Berkshire’s $380 billion cash pile and the pace of buybacks. Warren Buffett is 96, and the succession question is now answered. (For investors who still want to borrow Buffett’s homework, we sorted Berkshire’s holdings by valuation and pulled the seven cheapest dividend payers into a free report here.)

Help Avoid These 13 Retirement Mistakes Before They Derail Your Future

One investment mistake could create big risks for your retirement. Many investors make the same critical errors: being too conservative, making big bets on “sure things,” or paying excessive fees. Any of those blunders can endanger your hard-earned savings.

Now you can learn the mistakes even experienced investors make (and ways you can sidestep them before it’s too late) with this new guide: 13 Retirement Mistakes and How to Avoid Them from Fisher Investments. (sponsor)

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