Investors and analysts expect Abel, a Berkshire vice chairman, to uphold the $1.18 trillion conglomerate’s track record of investing in companies for the long haul and eschewing dividend payments to shareholders.

Berkshire, which owns railroads, insurance companies, and an ice cream maker, has been preparing for this transition for decades. It came as a surprise, considering that the “Oracle of Omaha,” while mentioning the possibility of retiring as Berkshire CEO, never provided a clear timeline for when that might happen.

Greg Abel, born in Alberta to a working-class family, graduated from the University of Alberta in 1984. Following his graduation, Abel worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and energy firm CalEnergy. He then joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy (then known as MidAmerican Energy) in 1992, which Berkshire later took over, and became MidAmerican’s chief in 2008.

By the time he was appointed Berkshire’s new boss, Abel was already overseeing the conglomerate’s non-insurance operations, such as BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and dozens of chemicals, industrial, and retail operations. In 2024, he also assumed some of the capital allocation responsibilities previously managed by Buffett. In fact, the “Oracle of Omaha” stated in 2024 that he would want Abel to have the final say on decisions regarding Berkshire’s portfolio of public stocks, a job previously thought to be left to others.

Many executives who work with Greg Abel call him a perceptive questioner who closely scrutinises financial metrics and wants to understand the businesses and how they’re run.

A humble beginning

Born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, Buffett was the second of three children and the only son of Leila and Congressman Howard Buffett. From a young age, the “Oracle of Omaha” found interest in markets and entrepreneurship. His real interest in the stock market and investing can be traced back to his spending time in the customers’ lounge of a stock brokerage near his father’s own brokerage office.

Howard cultivated and nurtured his young son’s curiosity about business and investing further by taking him to the New York Stock Exchange. At 11, Warren bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for himself and three for his sister, Doris Buffett. At 15, he made more than $175 monthly delivering Washington Post newspapers. In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. He purchased the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 of his savings. By the time he finished college, Buffett had amassed $9,800 in savings (about $130,000 today).

Warren Buffett enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. He then transferred to the University of Nebraska, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1950. After being rejected by Harvard Business School, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School of Columbia University upon learning that legendary American economist Benjamin Graham taught there. He earned a Master of Science in economics from Columbia in 1951, after which he attended the New York Institute of Finance.

Despite being born into an influential family, Buffett had to work his way up. He worked at his father’s firm, Buffett- Falk & Co., as an investment salesman from 1951 to 1954.

From 1954 to 1956, he served as a securities analyst at Graham-Newman Corporation. Between 1956 and 1969, Buffett held several investment partnerships as the general partner. Since 1970, he has been the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

In 1951, after discovering his mentor Graham on the board of GEICO insurance, Buffett knocked on the door of GEICO’s headquarters, where he met Lorimer Davidson, GEICO’s vice president, discussed the insurance business for hours, and made his first purchase of GEICO stock. It was the same Davidson, who later became Buffett’s friend and a lasting influence.

Upon returning to Omaha, Warren Buffett worked as a stockbroker while taking a Dale Carnegie public speaking course, before going on to teach an “Investment Principles” night class at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

In 1954, Warren Buffett accepted a job at Benjamin Graham’s partnership. There, he worked closely with Walter Schloss (another investing behemoth). Graham’s principle was all about picking stocks that would provide a wide margin of safety after weighing the trade-off between their price and intrinsic value.

In 1956, he retired and closed his partnership. At this time, Buffett, who had amassed personal savings of over $174,000 (about $2.01 million today), returned to Omaha and started a series of investment partnerships.

Beginning of the journey called Berkshire

By 1962, Warren Buffett became a millionaire, and his partnerships grew to 11 entities, holding over $7,178,500, of which over $1,025,000 belonged to Buffett. He also merged the various partnerships into the single entity Buffett Partnership, which would be his primary investment vehicle for the remainder of the decade. Buffett invested in and then took control of a textile manufacturing company, Berkshire Hathaway. His partnerships began purchasing shares at $7.60 per share.

In 1965, when Buffett’s partnerships began purchasing Berkshire aggressively, they paid $14.86 per share, while the company had working capital of $19 per share. Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway at a board meeting and named a new president, Ken Chace, to run the company.

In 1966, Buffett closed the partnership to new money. However, he considered the textile business his worst trade. He subsequently transitioned his business to the insurance sector, and in 1985, the last of the mills that had been the core business of Berkshire Hathaway was sold.

A private business — Hochschild, Kohn and Co, a privately owned Baltimore department store — became Buffett and Berkshire’s first investment. In 1967, Berkshire paid out its first and only dividend of 10 cents. In 1969, Buffett liquidated the partnership and transferred their assets to his partners, including shares of Berkshire Hathaway. He lived solely on his salary of $50,000 per year and his outside investment income.

In 1973, Berkshire began acquiring stock in the Washington Post Company. Buffett became friends with Katharine Graham, who controlled the company and its flagship newspaper, and joined its board. Four years later, in 1977, Berkshire indirectly purchased the Buffalo Evening News for $32.5 million. Antitrust charges were instigated by its rival, the Buffalo Courier-Express. However, both papers lost money until the Courier-Express folded in 1982. In 1979, Berkshire expanded its media portfolio by acquiring stock in ABC (American Broadcasting Company).

In fact, Capital Cities Communications’ announcement of purchasing a $3.5 billion stake in ABC in 1985 surprised the media industry, as ABC was four times bigger than Capital Cities at the time. Buffett helped finance the deal in return for a 25% stake in the combined company.

In 1987, Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 12% stake in investment bank Salomon, making it the largest shareholder and Buffett a director. However, the “Oracle of Omaha” had to don the role of crisis-solver. In 1990, a scandal involving John Gutfreund (former CEO of Salomon Brothers) surfaced. A rogue trader, Paul Mozer, submitted bids in excess of what was allowed by Treasury rules. When this came to Gutfreund’s attention, he did not immediately suspend the rogue trader.

After Gutfreund left the company in August 1991, Buffett became Salomon’s chairman until the crisis passed. However, this crisis didn’t stop Buffett from working his wonders in the market, as in 1988, Buffett began buying Coca-Cola Company stock, eventually purchasing up to 7% of the company for $1.02 billion. It became one of Berkshire’s most lucrative investments, which it still holds.

In 2002, Warren Buffett entered into $11 billion worth of forward contracts to deliver US dollars against other currencies. By April 2006, his total gain on these contracts was over $2 billion. Buffett also announced he would gradually give away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five foundations in annual gifts of stock, with the largest contribution going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2008, Buffett became the richest person in the world, garnering a total net worth estimated at $62 billion by Forbes and $58 billion by Yahoo, dethroning Bill Gates, who had been number one on the Forbes list for 13 consecutive years. The next year, Gates regained the top position on the Forbes list, with Buffett shifting to second place. Still, the 2008- 2009 crisis took a toll on the duo’s values, which dropped to $40 billion and $37 billion, respectively. According to Forbes, Buffett lost $25 billion over 12 months during 2008-2009.

Still, Buffett didn’t slow down, as he agreed to buy General Electric (GE) as “preferred stock,” which included special incentives like an option to buy three billion shares of the aerospace giant, and Buffett also received a 10% dividend.

Berkshire’s quick elevation as market giant

In 2009, Warren Buffett invested $2.6 billion as part of insurance giant Swiss Re’s campaign to raise equity capital. Berkshire already owned a 3% stake, with rights to own more than 20%. Around the same time, the “Oracle of Omaha” acquired Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (the largest freight railroad in the United States) for $34 billion.

According to American journalist and author Alice Schroeder, a key reason behind the move was to diversify Berkshire from the financial industry. And as the Financial Times Global 500 came out in 2009, Berkshire Hathaway became the eighteenth-largest corporation in the world by market capitalisation.

Berkshire’s merger with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway was valued at approximately $44 billion in 2010 (with $10 billion of outstanding BNSF debt) and represented an increase of the previously existing stake of 22%.

The “Oracle of Omaha” surprised investors and market observers in November 2011, as over the course of the previous eight months, Buffett ended up buying 64 million shares of IBM stock, worth around $11 billion. This unanticipated investment raised his stake in the company to around 5.5%, the largest stake in the tech giant alongside that of State Street Global Advisors.

The move came as a surprise due to Buffett’s previously stated reluctance to invest in technology, as he “did not fully understand it.” However, Buffett was impressed by IBM’s ability to retain corporate clients.

Three years later, Buffett managed to bring his company back to its pre-recession standards, and in Q2 2014, Berkshire made $6.4 billion in net profit, the most it had ever made in a three-month period. On August 14, 2014, the price of Berkshire Hathaway’s shares hit $200,000 a share for the first time, capitalising the company at $328 billion. While Buffett had given away much of his stock to charities by this time, he still held 321,000 shares worth $64.2 billion.

Decoding the investment game plan

The rule is simple: buying undervalued companies with strong fundamentals while having the uncanny ability to predict market trends and proactively identify winning investments. The “Oracle of Omaha” prefers investing in businesses with lasting advantages and a clear value proposition, while avoiding speculative bubbles and practicing long-term patience.

Warren Buffett’s guidance helped Berkshire navigate many economic booms and recessions. Over his six decades at the helm, the company delivered impressive compounded annual returns of almost 20% – virtually double those of the S&P 500 index.

As of May 2025, Berkshire has gained more than 55,000,000% returns over 60 years (1964-2024), with a net value of $1.2 trillion in the process, and last but not least, expanding its Class A shares to be worth $167 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The figure is 39,054% on the S&P 500 stock index (with dividends included) or an annualised return of nearly 20%, close to double that of the S&P over the same period (1964-2024). Berkshire is now the most valued company in the world, despite not being a tech giant or oil producer. The company’s market capitalisation is valued at $1.2 trillion, making it the eighth-largest in global public markets.

While 2025 has seen stock markets bleeding and wiping off billions from net worths, Buffett has added $13 billion to his wealth. In the words of Chakrivardhan Kuppala, Cofounder & Executive Director of Prime Wealth Finserv, despite 2024 bringing the “bull market” cheer globally, Berkshire Hathaway quietly sold a staggering $134 billion worth of equities.

Instead of chasing phenomena like the AI wave, cryptocurrency, or IPOs, the “Oracle of Omaha” parked a massive amount of money into boring but safe US Treasury Bills, earning about 5% annually. That’s more than $14 billion in interest income in one year for just sitting on the sidelines.

Berkshire holds $330 billion in cash, with a majority in short-term Treasuries. That’s more than the combined market value of Starbucks, Ford, and Zoom.

Warren Buffett is obsessed with buying quality at a fair price. In 2024, he saw the market soaring beyond reason. In the words of Kuppala, “His favourite warning signal—the Buffett Indicator (Total Market Cap to GDP)— had breached 200%, a level he once called playing with fire. Historically, such levels preceded major market crashes. The last time this ratio peaked so high was just before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. Another red flag? The S&P 500’s price-to-book ratio, which hit levels not seen since the late 90s—another period of overvaluation.”

As Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, so did the Republican obsession with tariffs (as a weapon to reset Washington’s trade ties with its allies and other nations). Buffett has previously likened tariffs to economic warfare. And Berkshire is known for playing cautiously when there is a significant economic disruption like a trade war. Buffett’s rule is simple: Don’t lose money.

Also, he felt that “everything was just too expensive,” valuation-wise. So, he stayed patient.

At the conglomerate’s recently concluded annual meeting, the billionaire said the recent market downturn was “really nothing,” pointing to times in Berkshire’s history when his company’s stock lost half of its value in short spans. His firm had been “pretty close” to spending $10 billion on a deal recently, but eventually decided against it. However, even in the ongoing market headwind, Berkshire shares have gained more than 11% in 2025, whereas the S&P 500 Index rose less than 1% during the same period.

Warren Buffett’s approach was the same as his reaction to the 1999 dot-com mania, where he waited for the bubble to burst, and then bought. In 2008, he quickly bailed out Goldman Sachs and GE through strategic investments. In 2020, during the COVID-19 crash, he again acted cautiously. Buffett has been known for always going against the herd: Be fearful when others are buying and get greedy when there is a market panic.

“While markets panicked in 2025, Buffett wasn’t scrambling to sell. If prices fell further, he’d buy. If not, he’d collect interest. Win-win. Also, Berkshire’s massive cash pile may be part of a succession strategy. At 94, Buffett has already handed the reins to Greg Abel. That war chest? It’s not just a defensive shield. It’s a loaded gun for the next leader—ready to strike when the time is right,” Kuppala noted.

The road ahead for Berkshire

Greg Abel inherits a company with about $348 billion in cash. While the capital base looks solid enough to deal with the ongoing global economic uncertainty, the new Berkshire boss faces challenges like maintaining the “Buffett Premium.”

Abel lacks Buffett’s cult-like following among investors, which may gradually erode the additional value the market assigns to Berkshire due to Buffett’s leadership. Without Buffett’s reputation, Abel may face increased pressure to effectively deploy Berkshire’s massive cash pile in a still-expensive stock market, where valuations are high and finding bargains is harder than ever.

While Berkshire has increased its technology investments over the years (including positions in Apple and Amazon), balancing its legacy holdings (such as Coca-Cola and railroads) with growth sectors (AI, renewables) remains challenging.

Also, the conglomerate’s heavy reliance on coal and gas-fired utilities has drawn growing criticism as investors and regulators demand cleaner energy solutions. Buffett’s genius wasn’t just in picking stocks. It was also in capital allocation, dealmaking, and crisis management. For example, buying into Goldman Sachs during the global financial crisis. Will Greg Abel be able to replicate that? Only time will tell.

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