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Warren Buffett Is Retiring as Berkshire Chair. Here’s What It Means for Shareholders
By Martha C. White MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Warren Buffett is stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman after six decades, completing the company’s historic leadership transition.
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Famed investor and former CEO Warren Buffett announced Friday that he is stepping down as chairman of the Berkshire Hathaway board, effective immediately.
In a letter posted to the company’s website, he said, “The timing is right to complete the transition.” Buffett, 96, noted, “Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me. He has given me the opportunity to see Berkshire reach a point where I am more confident than ever about what lies ahead.”
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Under his six-decade tenure as CEO, the “Oracle of Omaha” transformed Berkshire from a struggling textile mill into a trillion-dollar colossus with a nearly $300 billion investment portfolio, including significant holdings of household names like American Express, Apple and Coca-Cola.
Together with vice chairman Charlie Munger, who died in 2023, Buffett’s investing acumen delivered a compounded annual return of 19.7% to shareholders, roughly double the return of the S&P 500. Even a rumor that Buffett would buy or sell a company’s stock could be enough to affect its share price. Over 60 years, Buffett’s “buy and hold” philosophy yielded an astonishing overall return of more than 5,000,000%.
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Buffett stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025 and was succeeded by his longtime lieutenant, Greg Abel, but initially retained his chairman role. He will remain a board member as chairman emeritus. His son, Howard Buffett, will become the new chairman, according to Berkshire’s succession plan. The younger Buffett, 71, has been a board member since 1993.
Buffett, 96, famously eschewed the idea of a long retirement, writing in the company’s 1991 shareholder letter that he planned to retire “about five to ten years after I die.”
Those annual letters became required reading for wisdom-seeking investors. Buffett also dispensed insights at Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, a gathering dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists.” At these events, Buffett would answer shareholder questions on a wide range of financial topics with plain-spoken humor. His most memorable folksy quips on value, volatility, market bubbles and more have become iconic advice for a new generation of investors.
A longtime Money contributor, Martha C. White has written about a variety of personal finance topics such as careers, credit cards, insurance, retirement and shopping, and has edited Money’s Best Credit Cards rankings. She also writes stories about business and the economy for NBC News and The New York Times.