Howard G. Buffett is taking over as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway upon the retirement of his father, Warren E. Buffett, on Friday.
He will step into the shoes of the most famously successful investor of modern times.
The elder Mr. Buffett, 96, is known as the Oracle of Omaha for his prowess in picking winner after winner for decades.
The younger Mr. Buffett, 71, has been involved in several businesses and charitable causes and has served on Berkshire’s board since 1993.
Berkshire Hathaway is a trillion-dollar company that has made major investments in numerous large firms, including Geico, Apple and Coca-Cola.
Few expect drastic changes; Howard Buffett has been a director of Berkshire for 30 years. Gregory E. Abel, a longtime lieutenant, took over as chief executive last year.
Howard Buffett
Mr. Buffett, who goes by “Howie,” attended three colleges in the 1970s, Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill.; Chapman College in Orange, Calif.; and the University of California at Irvine. He did not graduate from any of them.
In 1986, he began running a 400-acre farm north of Omaha that his father purchased for him. As an incentive to encourage his son to be healthy, Warren Buffett took a percentage of the profit that was smaller if Howard, then 200 pounds, kept his weight below 182.5 pounds.
Howard now manages a 1,500-acre farm in central Illinois that is owned by his family, and still operates the 400-acre farm in Nebraska.
He became a vice president at the agricultural company Archer Daniels Midland, but resigned in 1995 because of concerns over how it handled price-fixing allegations.
He has been involved in other business and philanthropic activities, including starting a photography publishing company, Bioimages, and establishing a charitable foundation in his name. His foundation has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Ukraine for efforts like mine clearing and improving infrastructure. He was a member of the World Wildlife Fund’s national council and a trustee of the Nature Conservation Trust, a charity he founded that works to protect the environment.
Mr. Buffett, the middle child of three, has been married to his second wife, Devon G. Morse, since 1982.
As Berkshire’s chairman, Mr. Buffett will lead the board of directors, who oversee firm but don’t get closely involved in its day-to-day operations. Mr. Buffett will guard the company’s “culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet,” Warren Buffett said in a letter to shareholders on Friday.
“I feel I’m prepared for it because he prepared me,” Howard Buffett told The Wall Street Journal last year. “That’s a lot of years of influence and a lot of years of teaching.”
Gregory Abel
A Canadian who started as an accountant, Mr. Abel, 64, joined Berkshire in 2000.
He helped expand Berkshire Hathaway Energy and most recently ran other companies owned by the firm, including Brooks running shoes and a private jet service.
As chief executive for the past year, he runs the business and oversees Berkshire’s major investments. His key lieutenants are the main actors in selecting which companies to purchase.
The sprawling company is sitting on hundreds of billions in cash, meaning more acquisitions are possible.
Investors will be watching Mr. Abel closely as he begins the immense task of following in the footsteps of a towering figure like Warren Buffett.
Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan, said last year, “Taking over from Buffett is harder than taking over from Superman.”
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett’s investment fund purchased Berkshire, originally, a textile company in Western Massachusetts, in 1964. Mr. Buffett turned it into a holding company, and expanded it far beyond its textile roots. It is based in Omaha.
It has owned See’s Candies, local newspapers, Dairy Queen, Benjamin Moore, Duracell and Fruit of the Loom, as well as companies in the furniture, jewelry, energy, railway, banking and housing sectors.
Its astonishing decades-long rise to a trillion-dollar company has been widely credited to Mr. Buffett’s sagacity in picking companies.
Mr. Buffett is regularly called the most successful investor of modern times, if not of all time.
Georgia Gee contributed research.
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