After more than half a century of reign, the revered investor of financial circles Warren Buffett, 94, announced on Saturday his intention to leave at the end of the year the head of his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, with which he raised billions.
“The time has come for Greg (Abel, a designated successor of the billionaire, editor’s note) to become director general of the company at the end of the year,” assured the one nicknamed “the Oracle of Omaha” at the General Assembly of Berkshire Hathaway.
Today vice-president of the group, Greg Abel, 62, was appointed in 2021 to take over from Warren Buffett.
Berkshire Hathaway, a former textile SMEs, has become over the years a gigantic conglomerate under the leadership of Warren Buffett and is now worth more than $ 1,000 billion in Wall Street, a first for an American group outside the tech sector.
“End of an era”
“This is one of the greatest investors of our time. His results speak for themselves: he surpassed the S&P 500 (the reference index to the New York Stock Exchange, editor’s note) over a year, five years, ten years and twenty years” in terms of yield, noted to AFP the financial analyst Art Hogan, by B. Riley Wealth Management.
All his life, Warren Buffett preferred to invest in the long term in stable companies whose accounts he peeled, allowing him to constitute over the decades the fifth world fortune.
Its conglomerate today has dozens of companies (from Duracell batteries to American insurer Geico) and actions in carefully selected companies, from Coca-Cola to Bank of America, from Chevron to American Express.
“It is really the end of an era – the greatest pure investor of these last generations is finally ending his career, and he goes in style,” praised analyst Steve Sosnick, of Interactive Brokers.
Not a total start
On Sunday, the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway “will be able to ask me questions” on this decision, assured Warren Buffett on Saturday. His members “will digest” the announcement and will be “unanimous in favor of this decision,” he anticipated. The advice of the board of directors will be formally rendered “in a few months”, according to Warren Buffett.
The investor indicated that even if he transmitted the reins to Greg Abel, who would have “the last word”, he “would remain around” and “could be useful in some cases”, without specifying what his role would consist.
This announcement, which took place at the end of the general assembly of Berkshire Hathaway, caused a torrent of applause of the shareholders present on the spot in Omaha, in Nebraska (center).
repayment
