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Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the company announced on Friday, Sept. 18. He is 96 and has held the role since 1970.
His son Howard takes the chair immediately. Warren Buffett becomes chairman emeritus and remains a director.
What Howard is not getting is the money.
His father has committed to giving away more than 99% of his Berkshire shares, and has been doing it for two decades, transferring stock to the Gates Foundation and to four family foundations while his children run the ones bearing their names. The plan has always been that Howard would hold the chairmanship as a non-executive guardian of the company's culture rather than as its owner or its manager.
Greg Abel made the distinction explicit. Warren's impact on Berkshire and its owners is without parallel in the history of American business, he said in a statement, and the culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of the company, with Howard as their guardian.
Abel is the one running it. He became chief executive when Buffett stepped down from that job at the end of last year, having been designated as successor in 2021.
Howard Buffett has sat on the Berkshire board since 1993, which is 33 years of preparation for a job that carries no operational authority. He farms in Illinois, runs the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which works on food security and conflict zones and has spent heavily in Ukraine, and served briefly as sheriff of Macon County.
The separation between chairman and chief executive is the point. Buffett held both for more than half a century, and the company is now splitting them permanently, with an operator running the business and a family member holding the chair to protect how it is run.
He built Berkshire from a failing New England textile manufacturer he began buying in 1962 and took control of in 1965. It is now one of the largest companies in the world, holding wholly owned businesses across insurance, railways, energy and manufacturing alongside a stock portfolio that has included Apple, Coca-Cola and American Express.
His own fortune came almost entirely from the shares, which he never split and never sold.
Buffett has spent years telling shareholders that the succession would be uneventful, that Abel would run the business better than he did toward the end, and that the culture was the only thing that needed protecting. Friday's announcement completes the arrangement he described.
He remains on the board.
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