Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Hathaway Chair: ‘Father Time Always Wins’
After 60 years at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett just made a move that reshapes who controls the culture and the cash at one of the world's most powerful companies.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
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 | BRK-B Price Prediction) 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.
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.)
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Trey has been an editor and author at 24/7 Wall St. for more than a decade, where he has published thousands of articles analyzing corporate earnings, dividend stocks, short interest, insider buying, private equity, and market trends. His comprehensive coverage spans the full spectrum of financial markets, from blue-chip stalwarts to emerging growth companies.
Beyond 24/7 Wall St., Trey has created and edited financial content for Benzinga and AOL's BloggingStocks, contributing additional hundreds of articles to the investment community.
Trey's editorial expertise extends across multiple publishing environments. He served as production editor at Dearborn Financial Publishing and development editor at Kaplan, where he helped shape financial education materials. Earlier in his career, he worked as a writer-producer at SVE. His freelance editing portfolio includes work for prestigious clients such as Sage Publications, Rand McNally, the Institute for Supply Management, the American Library Association, Eggplant Literary Productions, and Spiegel.
Outside of financial journalism, Trey writes fiction and has been an active member of the writing community for years, moderating workshop sessions at regional conventions.
