Warren Buffett to step down from Berkshire at year’s end, Greg Abel to succeed Oracle of Omaha
CNN
By Auzinea Bacon, CNN
(CNN) — In an announcement that many investors knew was coming but didn’t believe would actually happen, famed investor Warren Buffett said Saturday at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting that he would step down as CEO at the end of the year.
Greg Abel would take over at that point, pending board approval, and Buffett said he would not sell one share of Berkshire stock. Abel, the vice chairman of non-insurance operations of Berkshire, was designated as Buffett’s successor in 2021. Buffett will remain as chairman before turning that role over to his son, Howard Buffett, upon his death.
“Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year-end, and I want to spring that on the directors effectively,” Buffett said at CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
Buffett said only his children knew he would be stepping down.
The thousands in attendance gave Buffett a standing ovation.
Buffett, 94, was expected to discuss his succession plans at the event. He has been with Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) since it was formed in 1965.
From an early investor to one of the world’s richest people
Born in Omaha in 1930, Buffett first became an investor when he was only 11 years old. He purchased his first stock in 1942 — three shares of Cities Service, an oil company, each worth about $38. He eventually sold the stock at $40, a mere profit of $2 per share, although he could have later sold for $200 per share.
When he was 6, Buffett sold popular chewing gum brands and bottles of Coca-Cola, which Berkshire now has a massive stake in.
At 13, Buffett’s family moved to Washington, DC, when his father was elected to the US House of Representatives. Buffett would work as a newspaper delivery boy for The Washington Post. After earning $2,000 by the age of 15, he invested $1,200 in a 40-acre Nebraska farm.
Behind his savvy investing, Buffett had $5,000 in savings before he turned 20. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1950, he pursued a master’s in economics at the Columbia Business School in New York, paving the path to use $100 of his own money in 1956 to launch his investment company, Buffett Partnership.
In 1965, Buffett took control of a struggling textile mill in New Bedford, Massachusetts, called Berkshire Hathaway, which he helped grow into a giant conglomerate with close partner Charlie Munger.
Berkshire would acquire See’s Candies, and buy stakes in Coca-Cola and television network ABC, among other investments.
By 2025, Berkshire had a market capitalization of $1.1 trillion.
Buffett is the fifth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $169 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Buffett addresses tariffs
Buffett also finally shared what he thinks about tariffs.
The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway called America’s trade wars a “big mistake.”
“Trade should not be a weapon,” Buffett said. He also said that “trade could be an act of war.”
“The United States won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago,” Buffett said.
Buffett drew applause when he added: “(America) should do what we do best and (other countries) should do what they do best.”
Throughout the earnings release at the firm’s annual shareholders meeting, the company warned that tariffs made its outlook uncertain. Berkshire’s quarterly report said tariffs could have a negative impact on its growth.
“Changes in macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical events, including changes in international trade policies and tariffs, may negatively affect our operating results and the values of our investments in equity securities and of our operating businesses,” Berkshire said Saturday in its quarterly note. “We are currently unable to reliably predict the nature, timing or magnitude of the potential economic consequences of any such changes or the impacts on our Consolidated Financial Statements.”
Berkshire’s operating earnings fell 14% for the first three months of the year. Its insurance underwriting business made $1.33 billion in the first quarter, a nearly 50% decline from the first quarter of 2024, when it generated nearly $2.6 billion.
The “Oracle of Omaha” arrived at the event, aired live on CNBC, with heavy security and after shares of Berkshire hit a record high on Friday. The event drew former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Apple CEO Tim Cook and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.
Speaking from the weekend event dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists,” Buffett’s long-awaited comments come as concerns grow about markets and the economy. Major indexes in recent weeks have plunged, surged and bounced around in every direction over uncertainty about President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and the effects they may have on the global economy.
Buffett discusses Berkshire’s cash pile
Buffett addressed Berkshire sitting on hoards of cash. The company has about $347 billion in cash, up from $334.2 billion at the end of 2024.
Buffett said that Berkshire will eventually find places to invest its cash, but that “it’s very unlikely to happen tomorrow. It’s not unlikely to happen in five years.”
“We have made a lot of money by not being fully invested at all times,” Buffett said. “We don’t think it’s improper actually, for people who are passive investors just to make a few simple investments and sit for their life. But we made the decision to be in the business so we think we can do a little better than that by behaving in a very irregular manner.”
He touched on the importance of avoiding making impulse investments.
“Let’s say we had roughly $40 billion a year coming in … if you told me we had to invest $50 billion every year ‘till we got down to $50 billion — that would be the dumbest thing in the world to invest in that manner,” Buffett said.
He also mentioned that Berkshire nearly invested $10 billion but declined to discuss what asset.
Giving thanks to Apple
At the start of the event, Buffett gave a rare shoutout to Apple’s Cook, who was seated on the floor with other major stakeholders and guests.
“Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more money than I’ve ever made Berkshire Hathaway,” Buffett said when Cook stood from his seat in the crowd.
Berkshire Hathaway has major stakes in five companies: American Express, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Chevron and Apple. But much of Berkshire Hathaway’s investment value relies on Apple, which was valued at nearly $70 billion as of the end of September 2024, according to Berkshire’s third-quarter earnings report.
“Nobody but Steve (Jobs) could have created Apple, but nobody but Tim could have developed it like it has,” Buffett said, adding that credit was due to the tech company. Buffett said Cook has done a “wonderful job” running Apple.
Berkshire downsized its stake in Apple by nearly 50% during the second quarter of 2024, knocking its stake from 790 million shares to 400 million. It was a rare decision for Buffett, who is known for holding on to stocks for long periods of time.
‘Not been a dramatic bear market’
In what sounded like a calming comment for investors, Buffett downplayed markets’ recent volatility.
“What has happened in the last 30, 45 days … is really nothing,” he said.
The S&P 500 on Friday closed at 5,686.67 after closing at 5,675.12 on March 17.
“This has not been a dramatic bear market or anything of the sort,” Buffett said.
Who can fix the deficit?
The federal deficit, which hit $1.8 trillion in October, has been a major talking point in recent months as Trump tapped Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — tasked with slashing federal spending and jobs.
When asked about cost-cutting and DOGE, Buffett quoted economist Herbert Stein, saying, “If something can’t go on forever, it will end.” Buffett added the deficit is “unsustainable” and could get to a point that is “uncontrollable.”
“I think that it’s a job I don’t want, but it’s a job I think should be done, and Congress does not seem good at doing it,” Buffett said about someone solving the US deficit.
“We’ve come close multiple times and we still had very substantial inflation in the United States, but it’s never been runaway yet, and that’s not something you want to try and experiment with because it feeds on itself,” he said.
He later added that while it’s easy to increase spending, “it’s hard to cut people’s receipts.”
Greg Abel, the successor to Warren Buffett
Prior to Buffett’s announcement, there were questions about Abel taking over Berkshire.
Abel, 62, an Edmonton, Alberta-born businessman, who is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and the vice-chairman of non-insurance operations of Berkshire Hathaway, is slated to succeed Buffett at the start of 2026.
Sitting next to Buffett, Abel was asked to describe himself to investors.
“I would say, ‘more active.’ But hopefully in a very positive way, and we’ve got an exceptional group so it’s gone exceptionally well,” he said.
“At the same time, (Berkshire Hathaway) have great businesses and they run them very autonomously and that remains in place. If there (are) opportunities they see in their industry, we’re going to discuss it and see if that’s something we need to pursue or if we’re properly addressing the risk.
“I absolutely had to engage with each of them and they’ve been great and sharing their business models, their approach, their thoughts around where the risks and opportunity are. As we went through that, I had questions and wanted to engage with them. Warren talks about the curiosity being important as you go through things, that would be my style, to have questions and comments around their business, their frameworks.”
Buffett chimed in about Abel.
“It’s working way better with Greg than with me because … I don’t want to work as hard as he worked and I can get away with it, because we’ve got a basically good business — very good business,” Buffett said.
“The fact that you can do pretty well doesn’t mean you can’t do better, and Greg can do better at many things,” he added.
Buffett described Abel as someone whose active leadership is effective.
“You really need someone that behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit, and we get a lot of managers that bend over backward to not do that sort of thing and then we get some that bend forward,” he said. “Greg does something about it and I’ve generally been lax in doing something about it.”
Thousands gather to hear Oracle of Omaha
Although a typical shareholder meeting is a dusty, staid affair, the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting is entirely different.
Representatives and executives from many of the conglomerate’s companies talk to starstruck fans and stakeholders on a massive showroom floor at CHI Health Center. Any appearance by Buffett (security and reporters in tow) is usually met by a rush of people trying to take photos or videos with the nonagenarian.
And of course, many of the Berkshire companies on display sell limited-edition, shareholder-meeting merch. Buffett is, after all, known for making money.
Berkshire has grown so sprawling that it has in some ways become a reflection of the country itself. You can drive yourself in a Geico-insured car to get a Dairy Queen ice cream before you head back to your Clayton home powered by Berkshire Hathaway energy, to name a small slice of Buffett’s empire.
But that has led to its own problems for Buffett, who has repeatedly said in recent years that his company is so big it will struggle to deliver the kind of early eye-popping gains that made him such a figure of devotion for his investors.
For many of them, he’s more than just a business leader, he is a guide, a sage, the Oracle of Omaha.
This story has been updated with additional content.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Luciana Lopez and Robert Ilich contributed to this report.
