Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway chair

Succession completes eight months after Greg Abel took over as CEO

Warren Buffett stepped down as chair of Berkshire Hathaway on Friday, the company said, ending a 60-year run at the helm of the conglomerate. His son Howard Buffett will assume the chair role effective immediately, while Warren Buffett becomes emeritus chairman and continues to serve on the board as a director.

The succession comes eight months after Greg Abel took over from Buffett as chief executive, formalizing the generational handover at Berkshire Hathaway.

In a letter to shareholders announcing the change, Buffett wrote: “Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me. He has given me the opportunity to see Berkshire reach a point where I am more confident than ever about what lies ahead.”

The 96-year-old investor laid out the division of responsibilities that will follow his exit: “Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet,” according to the letter. Buffett added that Berkshire investors should regard his son as their insurance policy against which they hope to never claim.

Abel, who took over as CEO eight months ago, vowed in his inaugural letter to shareholders to preserve Buffett’s legacy. “Warren is obviously a hard act to follow,” Abel wrote in March.

Buffett developed the value investing approach that defined Berkshire’s strategy during his tenure — eschewing the latest trends in favor of searching out undervalued companies and taking long-term stakes. The discipline produced a conglomerate with nearly 400,000 employees and a $1.2 trillion valuation, with compounded annual returns just shy of 20% since 1965 that outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of two.

Under that approach, Berkshire ended up running firms including insurance giant GEICO and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, while building influential holdings in American blue-chip companies such as Coca-Cola and Apple.

Buffett, dubbed the “Sage of Omaha,” drew tens of thousands of investors each year to his annual shareholder meeting in Nebraska, an event often called “Woodstock for capitalists” where attendees picked his brains in Q&A sessions.