Why Berkshire Hathaway may face 'pressure' to pay cash dividend

00:00 Speaker A

And Kathy, um, you know, we’re of course approaching Greg Abel taking over at the beginning of next year. Um, will investors sort of give less of a pass to this company without Warren Buffett directly at the helm?

00:24 Kathy

I think that’s a really good question and one of the things I think that investors are probably focused on and probably need to think about is that my sense is there may be pressure once Greg takes over for Berkshire to pay a cash dividend. They’re one of the few components in the S&P 500, particularly given their size and their financial strength to not pay a cash dividend. And I think that’s one thing investors may want to focus on in a new management um era at Berkshire. And I think the other thing investors are also focused on is that and and why the stock has underperformed, is that you have arguably one of the world’s greatest investors stepping down from the helm of a very large conglomerate. The person um taking over has a very solid industrial background, but does not have a professional money management background. And we really haven’t heard a lot of detail about some of the kind of um, I guess second tier management um strength at Berkshire. It’s there. I think they would do investors and themselves a favor to highlight it, but we really haven’t heard a lot of that. So there’s, you know, there’s a transition period in the broader economy that impacts Berkshire. There’s also a transition at Berkshire that’s impacting them and you know, more information is better than less. And unfortunately, we haven’t heard a lot of details about the transition.