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Warren Buffett takes the next step with a long-term plan to ensure Berkshire stays on track even after his death
Warren Buffett speaks at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 2, 2026.
CNBC
Warren Buffett is taking the third major step in a multiyear plan to gradually distance himself from Berkshire Hathaway, the once-troubled Massachusetts textile manufacturer he took over in 1965 and lovingly built over six decades into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
But even though he’s just 96 years old, he’s not completely retiring and remains committed to ensuring Berkshire maintains the core values it was built on even after saying goodbye for good.
First, it appointed longtime Berkshire veteran Greg Abel as its next CEO, putting him in charge of many of Berkshire’s operating companies.
In May 2025, the company announced that it would step down as CEO at the end of the year, but would remain chairman, with Mr. Abel taking over as chief executive officer.
As we reported in a special edition of our newsletter Friday morning, he will step down as chairman but will remain on the company’s board as “chairman emeritus” to “continue to provide valuable judgment and perspective.”
And, crucially, his son Howard will become chairman, “consistent with our long-standing succession plan.”
As Buffett said in a letter to shareholders, Howard’s primary responsibility is to “protect[Berkshire’s]culture and values, which we value above all else on the balance sheet.”
Philanthropist Howard Buffett spoke to CNBC at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2023 Annual Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Both the company’s news release and Buffett’s accompanying letter to shareholders emphasize the continuity represented by Buffett’s son becoming chairman of the board.
“The culture Warren built and the values he championed will always be at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be its guardian,” Abel said.
Buffett said his son has served on the board for 33 years. “Think of Howard as a shareholder-owned policy that they hope will never go against.”
As CNBC’s Becky Quick said on Friday morning’s “Squawk Box” bulletin, Buffett “always talks about Berkshire Hathaway like it’s his own child, and I think making sure it’s in the right hands was one of the most important decisions he’s ever made.”
Since Abel became CEO, both he and Mr. Buffett have maintained that Mr. Buffett still comes into the office five days a week and that they speak at least once every few days.
Many on Wall Street believed Abel was responsible for Berkshire’s now $37 billion investment. of the alphabet Buffett told CNBC in July that he was the one who started it, with Abel’s approval.
“I haven’t done anything that (Abel) doesn’t approve of. He hasn’t done anything that I don’t approve of. We talk all the time…but he’s the one who makes the decisions.”
It remains to be seen whether today’s announcement signals a change in that relationship, with Buffett taking a more passive role, or whether he will remain as active as ever, just with a different title.
Buffett said in the letter that he still has the “best job in the world” and that he has “never felt better about what’s next.”
“It was always a question of when, not if. Mr. Buffett made a clean exit,” Brian Jacobsen of Annex Wealth Management told Reuters.
“This feels more like a carefully planned succession than a sudden changing of the guard.”
Who is Howard Buffett?
It has long been known that Warren Buffett plans to hand over the chairmanship of Berkshire Hathaway to his son Howard, who prefers to be known as “Howie,” but Buffett is not as well-known as his father.
This has led several major news organizations to profile him and what Bloomberg describes as his “eclectic background.”
According to the New York Times, he attended three colleges without graduating from any of them until 1986, when he began managing a 400-acre farm north of Omaha, which he still manages, along with a 1,500-acre farm in Illinois.
He has a background in law enforcement and has served as county sheriff for more than a year since 2017, after completing “more than 3,300 hours of patrol and training with certifications in 76 types of weapons, including Tasers, handguns, rifles and shotguns,” as Reuters reported at the time.
Howard Buffett, like his father, is a well-known philanthropist. His foundation, which receives annual donations from Warren Buffett, donated $700 million last year with a focus on food security, conflict mitigation and anti-human trafficking, according to a report in Barron’s, citing the organization’s annual report.
Ukraine was a major beneficiary, receiving approximately $350 million in 2025 and a total of $1.1 billion since the Russian invasion in 2022.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he told CNBC in 2022 after visiting the country.
Although Mr. Howard is not a typical businessman, he is “no stranger to corporate boards,” as he has served on the boards of companies such as Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Enterprises and ConAgra Foods, the Wall Street Journal notes.
But his main qualification to become Berkshire’s chairman, according to the paper, is that “his father is Warren Buffett.”
“He’s my son, so I understand,” Buffett was quoted as telling a newspaper in 2025.
In the article, Howard said of his eventual chairmanship, “I feel like I’m ready for it because[Warren]prepared me for it. It’s the result of years of influence and years of guidance.”
“When the time comes, I’m ready to do it. But that’s who I am. I’ve spent most of my life doing things that I don’t really know how to do.”
Berkshire stock is calm…now
Wall Street doesn’t seem to expect the announcement to have much of an impact on the company’s outlook, at least not yet.
Both Class A and class B Shares initially fell in early trading Friday, but then recovered and ended the day largely unchanged.
That may be because the so-called “Buffett premium” has already faded.
Berkshire shares have fallen more than 5% since last May, when he announced plans to step down as CEO at the end of 2025. S&P500has increased by more than 34%.
And since the beginning of this year, Berkshire’s B shares have underperformed the benchmark by more than 10 percentage points.
Buffett and Berkshire on the Internet
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CNBC’s Buffett Archive Highlights
Berkshire’s culture is “self-reinforcing” (2015)
Warren Buffett explained why he believes Berkshire’s culture is “deeply ingrained” and will continue long after he and Charlie Munger are gone.
Audience: Long after you leave, how can we as outside investors determine the state of Berkshire’s culture?
Warren Buffett: Well, I think it’s natural for you to come in with questions about the culture after me and after Charlie, but I think you’re very — I don’t think we should be surprised, but I think you’ll be very happy with the outcome…
For Berkshire, it is extremely important to have a well-defined, deeply rooted culture that permeates our parent company and subsidiaries. This is also reflected in our shareholders.
And if 97 percent of shareholders voted and said no dividends, I don’t think there’s any other company in the world like that.
So the directors sign it and we act consistently there as well. You don’t have a bunch of directors who love being on the board because they want to get $2 or $300,000 a year if they attend four times a year, but you have directors who see it as a great opportunity to be a manager and want ownership, and just like you, they have ownership rights represented by buying stock in the market.
So we, I mean, we try to define and define that culture in every way possible, and it has been strengthened to an extreme level over the years.
Those who join us believe it. People who avoid us don’t believe in it, so we self-reinforce it.
And I think it’s virtually certain that it will continue and become even stronger. Once Charlie and I are gone, no one will doubt that it will really continue for decades and decades to come, not because it’s a force of personality, but because it’s institutionalized.
berkshire stock watch
BRK.A stock price: $763,600.01
BRK.B stock price: $509.77
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 12.82
Berkshire Market Capitalization: $1,090,754,504,023
Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (down 8.0% from March 31)
Net of railroad cash and national taxes paid: $359.2 billion (down 3.8% from March 31)
Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in the second quarter of 2026.
Berkshire’s Top Stock Holdings – September 18, 2026
Berkshire’s top U.S. and Japanese listed stocks by market capitalization, based on the latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s August 14, 2026 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.
Question or comment
If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@cnbc.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.
— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor
