Warren Buffett is retiring by the end of the year as CEO at the Berkshire Hathaway empire he has built and is recommending the board replace him with Greg Abel, an energy executive and dealmaker.
At the very end of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders’ meeting, Buffett, 94, said he would ask the conglomerate’s board to vote Abel, 62, as the chief executive to replace the Oracle of Omaha by the end of 2025.
Buffett’s withdrawal from the $1.2-trillion Berkshire Hathaway he founded and managed with late business partner Charlie Munger, is not a surprise—it has been expected for some time. Nor is it surprising that Abel, who joined Berkshire in 2000 when Buffett bought MidAmerican Energy, is being promoted. Abel has long been seen as the ‘crown prince’ to take over the reins of Buffett’s crown achievement.
Buffett said he would still “hang around” to help, but Abel would have the final say about deployment of capital and company operations.
Abel, a Canadian executive, is currently Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman of non-insurance operations and was confirmed as a successor of Warren Buffett in 2021, after the late Charlie Munger let it slip during the annual shareholder meeting that year.
Abel is also chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
The incoming CEO of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate will have to decide what to do with around a $350 billion cash pile for investments, according to Bloomberg, after Buffett has sat out most of the market routs in recent years.
Berkshire Hathaway, however, has amassed more than 28% in Occidental Petroleum over the past few years. Buffett’s firm is the single largest shareholder of the U.S. oil producer, while Oxy represents Berkshire Hathaway’s sixth-biggest equity investment.
The top holdings of Berkshire Hathaway also include Apple Inc., American Express, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, and Bank of America, as well as dozens of other banking, insurance, energy, railroad, and consumer goods stocks.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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