In May 2025, Warren Buffett walked onto a stage in Omaha, Nebraska, before thousands of shareholders and announced, without prior warning, that he was stepping down as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway. Now, the transition is complete: at 94, the man known as the "Oracle of Omaha" has confirmed he will also relinquish the chairmanship, ending six decades of personal command over a company that he rescued from near-irrelevance and rebuilt into a $1 trillion institution. Buffett, whose net worth Bloomberg estimates at $145 billion, cited his age plainly in communications with shareholders, noting with characteristic dry wit that his one-year-old great-grandchild was "moving a bit faster than I am these days." He will remain on the board as chair emeritus, preserving a formal connection to the firm without holding executive authority.

Greg Abel, Berkshire's vice-chair, assumed the CEO role in May; now Howard Buffett — the founder's 71-year-old second child, who has served as a board director since 1993 — will take the chair. The succession plan has long been known inside Berkshire, though Buffett himself was candid about its nature. "He is getting it because he's my son," Buffett told the Wall Street Journal in January 2025, adding that he trusted all three of his children completely. CEO Abel, for his part, described Buffett's influence as "without parallel in the history of American business," and pledged that the culture and values Buffett had built would remain central to the company, with Howard serving as their "guardian.

" What those values look like in practice under new leadership is the question that markets, and Berkshire's roughly 900,000 shareholders worldwide, will now begin to answer.