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Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him

55 pointsby 1h agonytimes.com
31 comments
1h agoHN ↗

Best wishes and all. But given Berkshire's scale, and the son's age (71), questions about the next succession plan seem appropriate.

Also, since the NYT says nothing else about the son: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett In context, his recent involvement in local politics seems rather odd.

1h agoHN ↗

Rags to rags in three generations, don't forget. These people are not Warren Buffett and most likely do not share his skill, luck, and psychological investment.

36m agoHN ↗

The grandson was in FFA (Future Farmers of America) in high school. My guess is the Buffett family values environment was not typical suburban USA.

1h agoHN ↗

Is grooming the right word here? The guy is 42, grooming to me has a pedophilic connotation.

57m agoHN ↗

This is how groomed is used, yes. The sexually overt connotation is a very recent thing.

15m agoHN ↗

71 is way past retirement age in many countries. Also didn’t know Warren Buffett is 96 already. Maybe it’s time to pass the torch to someone younger from a different generation

1h agoHN ↗

People take what he does and says as gospel so knowing he went with monarchy tier nepotism is going to be very annoying.

47m agoHN ↗

Or it could be very beneficial - you don't need to know anything about finance to judge the quality of this particular decision, so it's easier to cast doubt on other gospels

52m agoHN ↗

Maybe the implication is that Warren thinks it’s significantly easier to run a wealth fund than get gold in the Olympics. I would probably agree.

46m agoHN ↗

there's nothing wrong with leaving things to your kids to run.

that's the point of the effort after all.

warren as smart as he is was tryna go against the grain of thousands of human evolution. if you train your kids - then most likely they would've values similar to yours. hit or miss but most times a hit.

30m agoHN ↗

As I understand, the son is there not to lead the company (Greg Abel is the CEO), but to oversee their family's share in the enterprise.

10m agoHN ↗

Still leaves an absurd amount of wealth to manage.

29m agoHN ↗

While I liked your comment enough to upvote, I then realized that Chairman isn't an operational position. It's more a position where the person can exercise ownership of a company (to put it in layman terms). In your analogy he wouldn't be the athlete, more like the person who gets the winning money (assuming his son also has shares) and chooses the trainer/coach of the athletes (which still needs skill btw).

20m agoHN ↗

The Chairman position is to protect company culture, not make operational decisions.

9m agoHN ↗

Not sure any chairman has their ear to the ground to fully understand the culture within their organization.

I never saw our CEO in person, never saw our chairman even on a webinar.

And yes it's not their job to be that low level, but they can't have an idea of the culture either.

7m agoHN ↗

Oh it applies to him. He just doesn’t care.

55m agoHN ↗

Buffett has been planning this since at least 2011:

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett has told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that after he dies, he wants his son to become non-executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree, would be a good successor, the elder Buffett said, because he understands the values of the company.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-wants-farmer...

50m agoHN ↗

Sat on a couple of boards and the non exec chair mostly just guards the culture and can fire the CEO. Abel runs the business. That's a very different job from Howard's.

31m agoHN ↗

Many people do not know this but he still holds the stock that he first bought as a 13y old. It is now worth 8+ figures!

17m agoHN ↗

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but what's the point of "never selling"? Stocks are not a collectible that you can just look at for fun. Their whole point is to sell for profit, at some time. Maybe it's just me but if you "never cash out", that seems a waste of capital. Or perhaps this is a marketing stunt wealthy people sometimes to? Akin to "I live in a small house".

12m agoHN ↗

this is such a funny comment, we are so tech-pilled that we forgot companies traditionally pay dividends and that’s the reason to invest, to share in the profits, not to speculate

10m agoHN ↗

He sells stuff all the time just not impatiently and not if it is worth more than his instrinsic measure of it. That is why he is who he is!