Warren Buffett, the long-time CEO of conglomerate giant Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) and (BRK.B) , announced Saturday he will step down probably by the end of the year.
Buffett has been one of the most successful investors of all time, famed for evaluating prospects from a value point of view as opposed to chasing hot stocks.
Buffett sprung his announcement at the end of Berkshire's annual meeting, held as always in Omaha, Neb., where Berkshire is based.
The 94-year-old Buffett would be succeeded by Greg Abel, who has long been Berkshire's CEO-in-waiting.
The exact details of the departure still need some fine tuning. Buffett will outline his plans at Sunday's board meeting in Omaha.
Buffett said he hoped the decision will be ratified at its subsequent meeting in two months.
A Berkshire veteran
Under that scenario, Abel would take over as CEO on Jan. 1, 2026.
Since 2008, the Canadian-born Abel, 62, has been CEO of Berkshire-Hathaway Energy, which owns a vast empire of electric utilities across the country. Abel came to Berkshire in 1999 with Berkshire's acquisition of Mid-American Energy. Buffett designated Abel as his successor in 2021.
As Buffett made his announcement, he said he'd told no one about his decision except his children Howard and Susan. Both are Berkshire Hathaway directors.
Howard Buffett may take over as executive chairman.
Wants to 'hang around and be useful'
Warren Buffett said that, after the transition, he expected "to hang around and be useful."
Presumably "being useful" would include being consulted on any big deals that Abel and Berkshire would propose.
The announcement stunned the annual meeting with some 19,000 attendees. The audience responded by giving Buffett a long standing ovation.
Attendees getting ready for Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders meeting on Saturday. CEO Warren Buffett announced he expected to step aside at the end of 2025. Bloomberg/Getty Images
Defends free trade
Early during Berkshire's meeting, Buffett offered a full-throated defense of free trade and against heavy tariffs.
"Trade should not be used as a weapon," he told one questioner. "We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best and they should do what they do best.”
The problem is that too many are using trade as a weapon, he said.
"I don’t think it’s a great idea to design a world where a few countries say 'ha-ha-ha, we won' and the rest of the countries are envious,” Buffett said, then added, “Trade should not be a weapon."
Won't sell shares
Buffett does not expect to sell any of his Berkshire shares.
He is the largest holder of Berkshire-Hathaway shares. He owns 206,359 shares of the company's class A stock, about 37% of the total in the class. The stake, based on Friday's close of $809,350 per share, is worth $167 billion.
He also owns 951 Class B shares, worth an additional $513,000, based on Friday's $539.80 close.
Berkshire's Class A and B shares rose about 1.8% on Friday and are up about 19% so far this year. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index is down 3.3% on the year.
Berkshire had a market capitalization of $1.42 trillion dollars as of Friday's close.
That was good enough to rank eighth among U.S. companies by market cap, after Facebook-parent Meta Platforms (META) and ahead of electric-vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA) at $913.7 billion.
Born and raised in Omaha, Buffett was the son of a stock broker and a member of Congress. Buffett spent time at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the University of Nebraska. He learned value investing from the highly influential Benjamin Graham at the Columbia University School of Business.
He preferred managing investments as opposed to playing broker. In 1965, Buffett bought control of Berkshire Hathaway, then a struggling textile manufacturer, in 1965. He slowly sold off the textile and related businesses and invested heavily in insurance, utilities, retailing and other businesses.
He also dabbled for a time in newspapers as an investor in The Washington Post and, later, owner of The Buffalo News in New York.
He emerged as the controlling shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway in 1970. In 1978, Charles Munger joined Berkshire as vice chairman and effectively functioned as Buffett's business partner until Munger passed away in 2023 at age 93.
Munger convinced his friend to think about buying very good companies at good prices and letting managements build the businesses from there.
Then, he convinced a skeptical Buffett to consider buying into Apple (AAPL) on the grounds the tech giant was a great consumer company. Apple became Berkshire's largest and, by far, most successful investment — with more than 1 billion shares.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was an attendee at Berkshire's meeting on Saturday.
Berkshire is big, really big
Berkshire is now one of the largest conglomerates in the country. It holdings include Geico Insurance; the BNSF Railway (the nation's largest railroad by miles of track; Lubrizol; Pilot Flying J truck stops; Sees Candies; Benjamin Moore paints; Duracell batteries; Fruit of the Loom, and Dairy Queen, the ice-cream chain.
Its massive investment portfolio includes stakes in:
The huge Apple stake has been trimmed substantially in the last few years and was down to 300 million shares as of Friday and were worth about $62 billion.
