The billionaire investor will remain on the company’s board as chairman emeritus, eight months after stepping down as CEO
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NEED TO KNOW
- Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway at age 96
- His son Howard G. Buffett will succeed him as chairman, while Buffett will remain on the board as chairman emeritus
- The move comes eight months after Buffett stepped down as CEO, ending his decades-long tenure leading the company
Warren Buffett is stepping down from another longtime role at Berkshire Hathaway.
The billionaire investor, 96, has relinquished his position as chairman of the multinational conglomerate after more than five decades, the company announced on Friday, Sept. 18. His son, Howard G. Buffett, will succeed him as chairman, effective immediately.
Warren, meanwhile, has been named chairman emeritus and will remain a member of Berkshire Hathaway’s board of directors.
“Father Time always wins,” Buffett wrote in a letter to shareholders announcing the transition. “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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The move comes eight months after Buffett stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO at the end of 2025, bringing his decades-long tenure running the company to a close. His longtime lieutenant Greg Abel succeeded him in that role.
At the time, Buffett remained chairman of the company, a position he had held since 1970.
Now, he says the time is right to complete Berkshire’s leadership transition.
“I have served Berkshire since 1965,” Buffett wrote Friday. “Sixty-plus years in, I still have the best job in the world. That is not something many people my age can say, and I have never felt better about what comes next.”
Buffett praised Abel, saying his expectations for the new CEO “were sky high from the start” and that Abel “has exceeded them.”
“He has taken hold of the Chief Executive Officer job in every respect,” Buffett wrote. “He has been making the decisions that matter for some time now, and I have not had to think twice about any of them.”
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Howard, 71, has served on Berkshire Hathaway’s board since 1993 and is chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. He will serve as nonexecutive chairman, while Abel will continue to oversee the company’s operations as CEO.
“Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values – both worth more than anything on our balance sheet,” Buffett wrote Friday. “Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.”
In a statement, Abel paid tribute to his predecessor’s impact on the company. “Warren’s impact on Berkshire and its owners is without parallel in the history of American business,” he said. “The culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian.”
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Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile manufacturer into one of the world’s largest companies after taking control of it in the 1960s. Today, the Omaha, Neb.-based conglomerate owns businesses spanning insurance, energy, manufacturing, retail and transportation, including GEICO, BNSF Railway, Dairy Queen, Duracell and Fruit of the Loom.
Buffett’s departure from the chairmanship comes less than a year after he signaled he was beginning to step back from his famously public role at Berkshire.
In a November 2025 letter to shareholders, Buffett said he would no longer write the company’s annual report or spend hours answering questions at its annual shareholder meeting.
“As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet,’ ” he wrote at the time. “Sort of.”
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Still, Buffett made clear Friday that his relationship with Berkshire isn’t ending. In addition to remaining a director, he continues to be one of the company’s shareholders.
“Serving as your Chairman has been the privilege of a lifetime, and I have never taken your trust for granted,” he wrote. “The company is in excellent hands, and I look forward to remaining a shareholder alongside you
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