Warren Buffett becomes chairman emeritus as Howard Buffett takes the Berkshire board

Berkshire Hathaway named Warren E. Buffett chairman emeritus on 18 September and elected his son, Howard G. Buffett, as chairman of the board. The move is effective immediately. Warren Buffett, 96, stays on the board. Greg Abel, who became chief executive at the start of 2026, still runs the company day to day.

The Omaha conglomerate is worth about $1.1 trillion. It owns insurers, railroads, utilities, manufacturers and a large equity book that includes Apple, American Express and Coca-Cola. The chairmanship Warren Buffett is leaving is the last of the two jobs that defined him. The first, chief executive, passed to Abel nine months ago.

What the letter said

In a statement released with the board announcement, Warren Buffett wrote that Abel “has been making the decisions that matter for some time now, and I have not had to think twice about any of them. So the timing is right to complete the transition.” He added: “Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values, both worth more than anything on our balance sheet.”

Howard Buffett, 71, has been a Berkshire director since 1993. His father noted that this is a longer apprenticeship than Warren himself served before taking control at 34. Howard chairs the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which works on food security and conflict. He spent nearly a decade as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Against Hunger for the World Food Programme. He has also sat on the boards of Coca-Cola, Conagra and FirsTier Financial, and has worked in law enforcement.

Abel said the culture Warren built “will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian.” The culture, in Berkshire language, means leaving operating companies alone unless results force a conversation, holding cash until a price makes sense, and writing to shareholders in plain sentences. Abel is widely seen as more willing than Warren Buffett to confront weak units. Howard’s brief is to keep that tension from turning into a different company.

Why this is a board story, not a trading story

Howard will not be chief executive. He will not allocate the firm’s capital. He will run the board that oversees Abel and the independent directors who will, at some point, have to choose Abel’s successor. Warren Buffett told CBS as far back as 2011 that he wanted Howard in the chairman’s seat for that reason. Friday made the plan official.

Investors who bought Berkshire for Warren’s stock picking have already had a year to adjust to Abel. The remaining question is whether the board, under a son whose career has been philanthropy and governance rather than insurance underwriting, will keep the old bias toward patience. Nothing in Friday’s notice changes the equity portfolio, the cash pile, or the authority Abel has used since January.

What it does change is the letterhead. For six decades the chairman and the capital allocator were the same man. They are now two people, with the founder still in the room as emeritus and director. That is the succession Berkshire always said it wanted. It is also the first time the company’s owners will learn, in public, whether culture can be guarded by a chairman who does not write the cheques.