Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, ending a 56-year tenure at the helm of the conglomerate and handing the leadership of the company’s board to his son, Howard Buffett.
Buffett, 96, will remain on Berkshire Hathaway’s board as chairman emeritus, while Howard Buffett, who has served as a board member since 1993, takes over as chairman.
The move marks another major milestone in the carefully managed succession of one of the world’s best-known business leaders.
Buffett ended his tenure as chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of 2025, with Greg Abel taking over as CEO. His decision to now relinquish the chairmanship further reduces his formal management role at the company he transformed from a struggling textile manufacturer into one of the world’s most valuable corporate groups.
In a letter to Berkshire shareholders on Friday, Buffett said Abel had exceeded his expectations as CEO and cited his own age as another reason for stepping aside.
“Father Time always wins,” Buffett wrote, while adding that he had been fortunate to see Berkshire reach a point where he was increasingly confident about its future.
Abel, Buffett’s successor as CEO, described Buffett’s contribution to Berkshire and its shareholders as unparalleled in American business history.
Buffett’s Berkshire story began in the 1960s, when he started accumulating shares in the then-struggling textile manufacturer.
He acquired a controlling interest in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965. Four years later, he dissolved his investment partnership and made Berkshire his primary investment vehicle.
Under Buffett, the company gradually moved away from textiles and became a diversified holding company with major interests spanning insurance, transportation, consumer products, energy and other sectors.
Its businesses have included insurer GEICO, railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe, clothing company Fruit of the Loom and ice cream chain Dairy Queen.
The transformation turned Berkshire into a corporate investment machine, with Buffett using a disciplined value-investing approach to acquire businesses and deploy the company’s growing capital.
One of the clearest measures of Buffett’s impact is Berkshire Hathaway’s market value.
Over his tenure, Berkshire’s market value grew at an average annual rate of about 19%, significantly ahead of the broader US stock market, according to the figures cited in the report.
That performance helped establish Buffett as one of the most influential investors in modern financial history and earned him the nickname “Oracle of Omaha.”
His investment philosophy, buying quality businesses at attractive valuations, maintaining a long-term outlook and allowing capital to compound, became a model studied by investors around the world.
The Berkshire approach also differed sharply from the short-term focus common in financial markets, with Buffett repeatedly encouraging shareholders to think of themselves as long-term owners of businesses rather than traders of stocks.
Despite stepping back from day-to-day leadership, Buffett remains one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
His net worth is estimated at about $145 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Yet his personal lifestyle has long contrasted with his immense wealth.
Buffett has continued to live in the Omaha, Nebraska, house he bought in 1958 for $31,500. His relatively modest lifestyle became part of his public image and reinforced his broader message about wealth, consumption and long-term investing.
Buffett’s influence extends beyond corporate America.
He has pledged the overwhelming majority of his wealth to charitable causes and has donated tens of billions of dollars during his lifetime.
In 2010, Buffett joined Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in establishing the Giving Pledge, an initiative encouraging some of the world’s wealthiest people to commit at least half of their fortunes to philanthropy.
Buffett wrote in a 2025 shareholder letter that more than 99% of his wealth at the time of his death would be distributed to charitable causes. The value of donations already made had reached about $60 billion by that point.
Buffett also became a prominent voice on taxation and wealth inequality in the United States.
He argued that wealthy Americans should contribute a greater proportion of their income in taxes, famously pointing out that he paid a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.
His position became associated with the “Buffett Rule,” a proposal for a minimum effective tax rate of 30% for Americans earning more than $1 million annually. The proposal became part of the political debate surrounding President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign but did not pass the US Senate.
Buffett’s career began in 1951 as a salesman at his father’s investment firm, Buffett, Falk & Co. He later worked as a security analyst at Graham-Newman Corp. in New York before returning to Omaha.
In 1956, he established his own investment partnership. Six years later, he began buying Berkshire Hathaway shares.
More than six decades later, the company stands as a sprawling collection of businesses and investments, while Buffett’s formal role has progressively diminished.
