Berkshire Hathaway Announces Leadership Appointments [pdf]
16 comments
·December 8, 2025missedthecue
Jamie Dimon is lining up his successor
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jksmith
Aside: The 1.3B investment in UHC suggests BH thinks Obamacare will be around for awhile. That, or reversing healthcare costs will not happen for the time being.
Traubenfuchs
After a lackluster year the market did NOT like this move at all.
beambot
This is classic Buffett year, being fearful when others are greedy & building a massive war chest for when a correction inevitably occurs.
When it comes to Buffett (and Berkshire), it's really only reasonable to look at 5-year returns, not 1-year or YTD.
gbacon
Had to be expected. Buffett was a once in several generations talent.
unsupp0rted
Is there a write-up somewhere of how much of an outlier he really was?
itsthecourier
Seems like they're splitting the responsibilities even more, Buffet will step down as CEO in this year's end.
He has been a role model in many areas of my life and it hurts to see how his best friends and wife died already. would have loved seen Charlie reach 100 years old age.
Visited Buffet's home in Omaha and accepted a well lived life can be one following your own set of values, specially when they do not conform to the normal.
I know more about Buffet and Munger lifes than my own grandparents whom died relatively young in my childhood. Cannot explain how anything related to Charlie and Warren had hit me, I think they really feel like close wise elders in my spirit
Mistletoe
How did you visit his home?
gordonzhu
Just a guess, but Buffett would often host undergrad and grad students at his home.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/warren-buffett-hosts-15-whar...
chollida1
Not sure why this is posted on hackernews.
Maybe the OP thought this was announcing Buffett's successor or that Buffett himself was stepping down?
I guess the one big thing is that Todd Combs is out at Geico which is pretty bad news for the firm as he was tremendous at running Geico and helping Buffett and Munger in an investment capacity.
Who ever gets the new CIO role at Berkshire is going to have a field day. They currently hold about $382B in cash.
You can invest in alot with a 1/3 of Trillion dollars and you can outright buy the vast majority of companies with a bank roll that big.
My theory is that Buffett is hoping for one last large crash before he retires so he can go shopping for distressed companies.
With so many long term people announcing they will be leaving within the next 2 years this announcement sets the table nicely for a new CEO(probably Greg Abel) and new CIO to pick their team.
jodrellblank
> "My theory is that Buffett is hoping for one last large crash before he retires so he can go shopping for distressed companies."
There was a video of a QA session with him recently where he was asked something like that and he answered (paraphrased) "we are keeping cash so that we can buy cheap things when they come up. Some people think I'm waiting so Greg Abel(?) can have a nice opportunity when he takes over, but I'm not that nice, if I see something I will buy it". And reiterated the commonly stated idea that Charlie Munger thought they'd have done better if they only ever made ~5 carefully chosen investments in the lifetime of the company, and that investing too freely, quickly, often, was a bad idea.
I think that leaves a difficult situation for the next CEO, people are going to expect them to do something and probably the best thing they can do is as much nothing as possible, reading, watching and waiting. Without Buffet and Munger's history of that it might be hard to defend.
ikidd
Buffet is stepping down at the end of the year.
chollida1
agreed. That had been previously reported
itsthecourier
I think the same, we maybe entering the state of market Munger grew up in. Dalio has been calling it for years. if it happens on Buffet watch and he manages it successfully it would be a text book example of resiliency in a kind of centenarian almost-black swam scenario.
Wonder if he can pull it just as he did with Solomon Brothers
Todd Combs leaving is the biggest news, but expected.
Everybody always talks about Buffet and late Charlie Munger, but they also knew how to hire talents like Todd Combs and Ted Weschler.