Warren Buffett retires as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

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Wednesday marked Warren Buffett’s last day as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, after 60 years in a job he bought himself with what he called the “shittest” investment of his life.

His strategy of using insurance premium “float” to make brilliant investments in stocks and assist in the acquisition of entire companies transformed a struggling textile mill into a trillion-dollar conglomerate, making him one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of over $150 billion.

He has already given away shares that are now worth $208 billion, and has ultimately instructed his children to donate almost all of what’s left.

It’s not exactly “retirement”. At age 95, he will remain chairman of the board and continue to work from the company’s Omaha headquarters.

But he said he plans to “just kind of stay quiet” and leave all decision-making to new CEO Greg Abel, who has been vice chairman of non-insurance operations since 2018. Mr. Abel first joined Berkshire in 2000, when Berkshire entered into a deal to acquire a controlling interest in MidAmerican Energy, of which he was president.

Still, when Mr. Buffett announced his plans to step down at the end of the year at his annual meeting in May, he was hopeful that he would be able to help, especially if “a big opportunity or some kind of moment comes up.”

Becky Quick, CNBC’s longtime Berkshire/Buffett correspondent, noted on Wednesday’s “Squawk Box” that Abel has been running “for the most part” a non-insurance company for “years” and has done a “tremendous job” of keeping things running smoothly and addressing many of the issues that Buffett himself didn’t want to deal with.

She hopes that for Abel, having Buffett and his 30% voting stake will serve as a “fire shield against people who try to say, you’re not Warren Buffett, this isn’t your company.”

For several years now, Mr. Abel has been making independent assessments of how Berkshire manages its wholly-owned subsidiaries.

Back in 2023, in a section of our newsletter headlined “Things are already starting to change at Berkshire,” we reported on CNBC’s interview with Buffett and Abel in Japan.

Both men smiled and appeared to be mostly joking, but it was clear that Mr. Abel was much more involved in running the subsidiary, in contrast to Mr. Buffett’s famously decentralized approach.

At the 1999 annual meeting, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger said, “Non-interference is very valuable, at least for the types of managers and the types of companies that have joined us.”

“Not only do people have more time to do something productive, I think they actually appreciate the fact that they’re left alone.”

Twenty-four years later, Buffett said: “Our managers like autonomy, but they’re also lonely…I give them autonomy, but Greg gives them both. And he gets some more discipline from the manager…than I get.”

Earlier this month, Berkshire announced it was adding a new layer of management, appointing the CEO of its NetJets subsidiary to “support the talented CEOs of our 32 consumer products, services and retail businesses and protect Berkshire’s culture and values.”

But while Berkshire is starting to change, it won’t change dramatically overnight.

Shareholder Ann Winblad told CNBC’s “The Exchange” on Wednesday that a new CEO will “change the way the company operates,” but it won’t “fundamentally change its strategy.”

Barron’s Andrew Barry writes that Buffett’s continued stay with the company “could mean that key issues such as the potential for dividends (which Buffett has consistently opposed), stock buybacks, and the deployment of Berkshire’s more than $350 billion in cash balances could remain unresolved for some time, perhaps until after Buffett’s death.”

But over the very long term, it will be difficult for Berkshire to avoid becoming like other companies without Buffett’s meteoric success. To protect executives from impatient investors, Buffett will likely be forced to abandon his insistence on waiting for the right opportunity and resisting executives’ typical obsession with justifying their existence by always doing “something.”

Another big unknown is what will happen to Berkshire’s stock price if Buffett doesn’t become CEO.

This year, it underperformed the benchmark S&P 500 index as investors reacted negatively to Mr. Buffett’s announcement in early May that he would hand over his job to Mr. Abel at the end of the year.

of A shares The day before Buffett expressed his surprise, it closed at a record high of $809,350.

It has since fallen 14.4% to its closing low of $692,600 this year on August 4th.

The stock partially rebounded, ending the year at $754,800, up almost 10.9% heading into 2025.

The more widely held B stock We followed almost the same trajectory.

on the other hand, S&P It nearly fell into a bear market in April following President Trump’s tariff announcements, but it has risen 16.4% for the year.

As a result, Berkshire B stock overperformed by 22.4 percentage points in May, but turned into a deficit of 5.5 percentage points at the end of the year.

Including dividends, the S&P returned 17.9% this year, widening Berkshire’s underperformance to 7.0 percentage points, compared to a win of just 0.5 percentage points in 2024.

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Buffett’s career and achievements

Resourcefulness, Wisdom, and Investment

Berkshire and its stock price

What’s next?

Charlie Munger: I’ve always avoided compensation consultants.

To me, it’s something I can hardly find words to express my disdain for. (laughs)

Warren Buffett: I’ll say this. If the board hires a compensation consultant after I leave, I’ll come back. (laughs)

Charlie Munger: Crazy! Crazy!

So I think there’s a lot of nonsense in this area, and I don’t think it’s going to go away.

Warren Buffett: Yeah, it’s never going away. No, it will get worse. That — I mean, if you look at —

So the way compensation is handled, I mean, everybody looks at other people’s power of attorney and says, “We can’t hire someone who has no prior experience.”

Charlie Munger: That’s ridiculous.

Warren Buffett: — etc. Then the HR department that works for the CEO comes in and suggests a consultant.

Would a consultant who says, “We’re getting fourth-quartile results, so we have to pay the CEO below the fourth-quartile” get another job?I mean, just, you know–

It’s not that the people are bad or anything. It’s just the nature of the situation. This results in outcomes that are inconsistent with how owners’ representatives should act.

Charlie Munger: It’s even worse than that. Capitalism is the golden goose that we all live by.

And if people generally start to despise it because they don’t like the wage system in the system, capitalism might not last very long.

It’s like killing the golden goose.

So I think there are a lot of problems with the existing system.

BRK.A stock price: $754,800.00

BRK.B stock price: $502.65

BRK.BP/E (TTM): 16.07

Berkshire Market Capitalization: $1,084,815,990,868

Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $381.7 billion (up 10.9% from June 30)

Excluding railroad cash and outstanding Treasury bills: $354.3 billion (4.3% increase from June 30)

There have been no repurchases of Berkshire stock since May 2024.

(All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise noted)

Berkshire’s top U.S. and Japanese listed stocks by market capitalization, based on the latest closing prices.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s November 14, 2025 13F filing. However, the following cases are excluded.

A complete list of holdings and current market value is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, we do not forward questions or comments to Mr. Buffett himself.)

If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can sign up here.

I also highly recommend Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. It’s collected here on Berkshire’s website.

Happy new year!

— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor