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As Warren Buffett is set to take the stage once more at Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK-A, BRK-B) annual shareholders meeting, it's only natural that questions around his succession resurface and what that might mean for the future of the company.
In conversations with shareholders and Buffett watchers, many believe that the 88-year-old investing legend has built a company and culture that will last long after he is gone.
For starters, he's developed a deep bench of talent when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway’s leadership. In early 2018, Buffett put Ajit Jain in charge of all Berkshire Hathaway's insurance activities and Greg Abel in charge of all other operations.
"These moves were overdue," Buffett wrote in the annual letter. "Berkshire is now far better managed than when I alone was supervising operations. Ajit and Greg have rare talents, and Berkshire blood flows through their veins."
[Click here for coverage of the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting.]
On the investing side, Buffett's two younger lieutenants, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, each manage $13 billion of Berkshire's massive $173 billion stock portfolio and have "total discretion" over investment decisions.
Lawrence Cunningham, the author of "Berkshire Beyond Buffett," is confident about the future of the investing and insurance conglomerate because of the talent at Berkshire and its subsidiary companies.
"It's an amazingly talented group of people. Everyone thinks Warren's a one-man show at Berkshire, but that book demonstrates that there are hundreds of supremely talented people that he's trained and groomed and brought along," Cunningham told Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer, during a panel at Yahoo Finance's U.S.-China Forum on Friday.
Cunningham added that when he speaks to Abel, he often thinks that's talking to Buffett himself.
An investment from Buffett is a vote of confidence, especially during times of financial stress when companies require a lifeline. While the capital may be critical, there's a significant endorsement that comes with the name Buffett.
"That's obviously the one big thing that you lose, right, when Charlie and Warren aren't around is that kind of market clout," UBS analyst Brian Meredith said during the forum.
However, Meredith predicted that Buffett is training his investment deputies to fill that role.
"They're developing all these connections and Warren is super smart, and he knows how to mentor people, and that's what he's doing right now to put them in that position when you have a situation, like a financial crisis or whatever, they know, or an investment banker on Wall Street knows, 'Ah, I can call Todd, or I'll call Ted, or I can call Ajit,' right? Boom, first call."