Todd Combs, one of Warren Buffett’s hand-picked investment lieutenants and a key executive at Geico, Berkshire Hathaway’s top-tier insurance business, is leaving the conglomerate after a 15-year tenure that helped define the company’s post-Buffett transition. Mr Combs, 54, first came to the attention of Mr Buffett’s late partner Charlie Munger, who famously said he had received an unsolicited letter from the former hedge fund manager. “He sent me a letter and that’s how things happened,” Munger said in 2011. “And anyway, I had dinner with him, and then I called Warren and said, ‘I think you should talk to this person.'” Mr. Combs joined Berkshire in 2010 and spent 15 years on two feet. While helping oversee some of its vast stock portfolio, he also ran Geico, where he became chief executive officer. 2020. His background in financial companies was considered a special asset. “Todd has the advantage of having been thinking about financial companies like Berkshire for many years,” Munger said at the time. Berkshire announced this week that Combs will be transferred to JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lead new security and resiliency initiatives at the nation’s largest bank and explore direct equity investments in the defense, aerospace, health care and energy industries. Jamie Dimon told the Financial Times this week that JPMorgan is Combs’ “hometown” as he has been a director for nine years. Mr. Combs has found it “incredibly interesting to use his skills in different ways” at JPMorgan, Mr. Dimon said. Mr. Combs’ departure comes as Berkshire continues to build a leadership structure ahead of Mr. Buffett’s departure as CEO at the beginning of the year. The company appears to be trying to centralize decision-making that had long been decentralized under Mr. Buffett, adding a general counsel role and creating a president to oversee consumer, services and retail businesses. ‘Genuine and authentic’ Mr. Combs has spoken of his candid relationship with the Omaha oracle in interviews over the years. He recalled that Buffett early on challenged Berkshire’s preference for MasterCard over long-time owner American Express, and the notion that Progressive had a structural advantage over Geico. Berkshire’s Geico “is good at marketing and branding, but Progressive is a data company, and data will win in the long run,” Combs told Buffett. He later admitted that he didn’t understand Geico’s technology stack as deeply as he does now. Mr. Combs said he never felt pressured to tell Mr. Buffett what he wanted to hear, arguing that too much deference can distort decision-making at the top. Buffett praised Combs’ candor, saying, “Because when you’re a CEO, especially Warren and others, everyone kisses your ass and everyone tells you what they think you want to hear…I’m not here to agree with you, and you’re not here to agree with me…So I think that honesty is at least authentic and authentic,” he said.
