Warren Buffett Says Age Is Catching Up but Reaffirms Confidence in Berkshire’s Next CEO

Warren Buffett told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Monday that he is starting to feel the effects of getting older, even though he is getting ready to hand over the company's leadership to senior executive Greg Abel at the beginning of next year. The 95-year-old investor wrote a thoughtful new letter saying that even though his "ridiculously long" streak of good luck has kept him healthy for decades, time is catching up with him.

Along with the speech, Buffett said he would give an extra $1.3 billion to the four charities his children run. Since 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups have been slowly giving away a lot of Buffett's money.

For most of the last 60 years, Berkshire has done better than the stock market. Buffett's methodical and straightforward way of investing has attracted a lot of people to the company. But he said that the company's trillion-dollar size will make it harder to do better in the future. Berkshire's recent $9.7 billion purchase of OxyChem, one of its biggest deals in years, is a small change for a company of its size.

Buffett also told investors that he would keep writing Thanksgiving letters every year and that he would stay active as chairman of Berkshire. But next year, during the company's highly anticipated annual meeting, Abel will start writing the yearly letter to shareholders and answering questions.

Buffett's yearly letters are well-liked in the business world because they clearly explain how companies work, how markets work, and how to invest.

Jim Shanahan, an analyst at Edward Jones, said, "He really thought about the markets and the nature of business." He said he would miss Buffett's point of view. I will really miss what he said.

In the letter, Buffett talked about the people and events that had an impact on his life. For example, he talked about the doctors who saved his life several times and how he grew up in Omaha, where he made friends for life. He joked that he had taken the nuns' fingerprints "just in case they turned to crime" while he was in the hospital as a child.

Buffett accepted that he was getting older, but he also said that he was lucky to have avoided life-threatening accidents and survived prostate cancer. He said, "'Father Time' is unbeatable, but Lady Luck has been good."

Buffett said that he still goes to the office five days a week to look for ideas and opportunities that could help Berkshire's businesses, but he moves more slowly now and has a harder time reading.

He told shareholders that they could trust Greg Abel completely and that the new CEO knows Berkshire's business and employees "far better" than he does. Buffett also said that Abel has the judgment and ability to learn quickly that are needed to run the company's large portfolio of businesses.

Buffett said that a huge crisis is unlikely because Berkshire has a lot of cash (currently $382 billion) and a careful financial structure. But he warned that a company that big will have a hard time beating the economy as a whole in the long run.

He said that even though many of Berkshire's companies have bright futures, the company shouldn't expect to dominate the market in the next few decades. Buffett said that many younger, smaller businesses would grow faster, saying, "Our size takes its toll."

About Author

RILEY CARTER

Riley Carter writes about business, finance, and the economy, bringing readers insights into market movements, industry shifts, and corporate leadership.

Leave a Reply

Post Comment

Comment submitted successfully