Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway after serving in the role at the $1 trillion conglomerate for more than 50 years.
Buffett, 96, will become chairman emeritus and will take on his new role immediately, the company said Friday. His son, Howard, will become Berkshire Hathaway’s new chairman, part of a long-planned succession. Howard Buffett has been on the Berkshire Hathaway board since 1993.
Warren Buffett, known by a legion of financial market followers as the Oracle of Omaha, will remain a director. He has been Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman since 1970.
Greg Abel took over for Buffett as the CEO of the $1 trillion conglomerate at the start of this year, even though Buffett remains one of the most influential investors in the world.
“I have served Berkshire since 1965," Buffett said in a letter to shareholders. “Sixty-plus years in, I still have the best job in the world. That is not something many people my age can say, and I have never felt better about what comes next.”
Buffett said that he is confident with Abel and his son Howard leading Berkshire Hathaway.
“Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values – both worth more than anything on our balance sheet,” he said. “Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.”
Michael Withers, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said Buffett took a deliberate approach to Berkshire Hathaway's succession plans and has carried out the transition step by step.
“Buffett seems to have understood that succeeding him wasn’t just about finding another extraordinary leader,” he said. "It was about building a structure that could preserve what makes Berkshire different long after he has stepped away. The test moving forward will be whether Abel and Howard can honor that legacy while still giving Berkshire room to adapt to a market that looks very different from the one Buffett mastered.”
Buffett's fortune has been amassed through Berkshire Hathaway stock. The company, which was a New England textile firm that was built into an investing conglomerate and an icon of Wall Street. In 2024, Berkshire Hathaway became one of the first non-tech companies valued at more than $1 trillion.
Buffett, a longtime philanthropist, has given away roughly $66 billion worth of stock since 2006.
Buffett's take on finance has created its own gravitational pull. When Berkshire Hathaway reveals the stocks that the company has acquired or sold in public disclosures, it can shake markets.
During his time as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the company nearly doubled the returns of the S&P 500, with a 19.9% compounded annual growth rate compared with the index’s 10.4% gain.
“Warren’s impact on Berkshire and its owners is without parallel in the history of American business," Abel said in a prepared statement. “The culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian.”
Shares of Berkshire Hathaway pointed lower before the opening bell Friday.
