It's more a ceremonial thing, since as the headline plainly indicates, his son, until today known only as Placeholder Buffet, has been waiting to receive a name for 71 years
He's there to maintain the very unique culture of the company. I think it's sort of like if they have his son there he of all people should know Buffett's/Berkshire's culture and be able to best maintain it. He's got a few years to figure out a successor. But yeah this is mostly about the unique culture they have.
They can just add those people to the board. It’s not a set number and they don’t regularly add or remove people unless they think they can bring something to the table. Sometimes that is simply “holds a bajillion shares” but if they wanted a High Frequency Trading CEO on the board for insight into that, they could add both his kid and that CEO.
It's also entirely possible he's essentially competent at the job of being a board member which is a pretty do-little job if the CEO is doing a good job.
He was giving it to the Gates Foundation for Bill & Melinda Gates to manage, but that deal went into limbo when Bill showed up in the Epstein files and Melinda divorced him.
That's recent, just as of the last couple months. Historically the children's foundations have been a sideshow and he's given the bulk of his wealth away to the Gates Foundation. You can see that from the dollar amounts: this year's gift to the children's foundations was 1M BRK-B shares (the equivalent of about $500M) to each, while he's given away a total of $66B, over 120x as much.
Though unlikely the case here, family foundations should always be looked at as a likely source of corruption.
You cannot bribe me directly - that would be caught. However you can donate money to my family foundation and my kids (or spouse) will draw a large salary from it while doing almost nothing and they do some good for the world so it looks like a charity. Of course the kids/spouse will support me in various ways that all rich kids will.
Again, probably not what is happening here, but every time you hear of a family foundation you should ask who they are using it to corruption in some form. Even when it doesn't seem to be you should still look.
Even very large salaries are probably not a very significant amount of wealth for these people. I think this is a case where "all large numbers look the same."
If Warren just directly gave his money to his three children equally, and paid 40% inheritance tax on that money, and then the children each just used 1% of that wealth per year, then they'd each get:
144000000000 * 0.6 / 3 / 100 = $288 million each year.
No foundation pays its CEO 10% of that much money. I think we may have to accept that in fact this is a way to give money to charitable causes, not just horde it.
I believe they wouldn't have to because of the stepped-up-basis, but my point is that even if somehow they were paying the full 40%, it's still an inconceivably large amount of money.
It's more of a way to secure the fortune. You can't "secure" the personalities of all your offspring. If one of them gets out of line it could have disastrous consequences. Keeping it in a controlled institution boxes them in.
Even if that kind of corruption isn't there, these charities are still a net negative for society. Why do the super rich rail against taxes but then donate all of their money to family foundations? There are multiple reasons. Pull on that thread.
Plenty of other charities in the world. Just because he stopped giving to the Gates Foundation over Epstein ties doesn't mean he won't send the money somewhere else.
Sure. The thing with the Gates Foundation is that it was able to handle billions. Most charities aren't equipped to effectively manage and deploy that kind of wealth. The Gates Foundation made it easy for billionaires to send a large lump sum to one place that was equipped to deal with it.
Having to part out all his wealth $5m at a time to spread it around without overwhelming the systems in place, would be a second act that I'm not sure Buffett has the time for.
Most of them seemingly have control problems where even if they do, it is in the form of a giant money pile still under their control that they give away the returns of, usually also completely under their control.
My hot take is that men with extreme wealth and power are desperate to keep it as part of their identity, where the women I mentioned do not have the same character and personality flaws, and therefore use it as a tool to do good because they are not optimizing for status, power, and wealth: they are optimizing to do good. Doesn't always hold, there are exceptions.
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." -- Lord Action
One giant exception was Chuck Feeney, who made $8 billion on duty free shops and gave almost all of it away, much of it anonymously. By the end of his life he and his wife had a couple million and lived in a rented apartment.
When they agreed in Nashville to rename the airport after Dolly Parton, all of the people commenting on the TV clip said it was well-deserved.
Some were more emotional than others, but one of the proponents was very touched, she admired Parton so much because Dolly set an example of how to be as successful as a person can be, and not keep a billion for yourself.
I can't find the clip now, but it was from the heart.
I think more likely is that bill and Jeff built their wealth through their businesses, which they are still directly involved in. Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up
I think there's also a question of efficacy. Bill and Jeff are really good at turning $1 into $10. Melinda and Mackenzie? Not so much. If bill or Jeff wanted to maximize the amount they can give, the best strategy would be for them to continually earn until they die, and then donate it.
That's what it's about though. The amount THEY can give, not the benefit to humanity.
It's not like Bill and Jeff actually built any of these products themselves. Microsoft bought DOS. Right place, right time for that Nepo baby. Bezos at least had a normal family.
I agree that Bill and Jeff are better at exploitation at scale. That’s how you become that wealthy. We are lucky they’re divorced and the wealth is in the hands of better stewards to distribute it to do good.
I agreed right off the bat, they definitely reached scale like few others, but maybe it might have been the way they grew without stopping more so than today's well-known scaling process that got them there.
Doubtless they got in position early to take advantage of many potential upswings.
There's a large body of medical research around women having more empathy than men, specifically around brain volume in the inferior frontal gyrus. Does it always hold? There are always exceptions. Broadly speaking, in most cases, it is a function of brain structure, per person. Do you have many examples of exceptional wealthy and powerful women who are monsters? I do not. I welcome corrections and citations, and am happy to be proven wrong on this.
TLDR Show me the brain fMRI and I will show you the soul. In some cases, facial structure is enough for weak but meaningful signal (as a proxy for brain structure).
It bothers me how he and other billionaires think that it's all worth it letting them get so rich because they "give it away". It's almost insulting.
You know who could have used all that money all this time? The people you leeched it away from via this thing known as taxes and a functioning government. But no, let's give it away to private foundations who will serve only their needs.
It’s not really a “loophole,” it’s a standard way to give away absurd sums of money.
Have you ever tried to donate billions of dollars? It’s actually extremely difficult.
You have to find causes you’re passionate about/things that society needs, find the correct charities to give the money to, make sure your money actually goes towards the thing they say it will (this is difficult), and then figure out how much you can actually donate (you can’t just give N dollars to company Y. They’ve got zero experience managing that much money, and no way to scale into doing it efficiently.)
What happens then is you have $100b to donate, and mostly only do it $10m at a time or less.
Warren’s kids are old now. They’ve all been donating money for YEARS (it’s a mandatory part of their trust).
So yeah, you receive tax benefits by transferring shares to a foundation you also control, but that money is now earmarked for charity. It doesn’t flow both ways, and the laws on this are very tight (bad actors will find a way, but what’s new?).
Sure that is the typical way to donate your wealth but there are many other ways than giving it with control to your children. I have no judgement but doing it this way is a nice way to move money within your family.
Everyone does it different and I have no judgement but you could just as easily pick a quorum of folks to do the job with a very explicit timeline. Charitable donations are quite broad in the US. So sure lots of wealthy folk don’t this way but not everyone!
Can you just as easily pick a quorum of folks? It seems to me that no matter what, you're going to have to choose people you know and be accused of nepotism because those are the people you can actually assess, and in the case of children, hopefully raise/influence to be on the same page as you.
You could always donate it to the US government, but then it'll be used to go start some wars, so that won't work. You could put it in some weird trust where random people can democratically decide what to do with it, but all you have to do is look at the government to see how good of decisions that leads to. So truly what's the alternative?
Easy is relative but someone in his position with decades of experience working with talented individuals, yes. Nothing is perfect but I have seen other foundations structured where it’s a mixture of descendants and leaders that worked with the individuals. We are going to be picking at hairs though since this is all anecdotal and we don’t know how it will play out. Some of kids foundation work has been a bit self-serving but it’s there money to spend. It could also just as easily be that the 3 kids are different enough that requiring all three to agree prevents most of the opportunity.
If it's so difficult, maybe they could take the easy option and, you know, properly fund the government to build the shared infrastructure on which we all rely by paying tax proportional to their wealth.
You mean fund ICE and build some more concentration camps?
Approximately 1% of the federal budget is infrastructure. There are huge advantages to donating to a charity that actually does something productive instead of the federal waste machine.
Or maybe, just maybe, a system that doesn't create massive concentration of wealth won't try to divert people's focus by pitting people against each other and building concentration camps. Governments aren't fundamentally wasteful. In fact, an effective government is an absolute requirement for functioning healthcare, fair wages, consumer protection, and actual public safety that protects all people equally.
This isn't to diminish all the good things charities have done, but charities are fundamentally band-aid solutions to a dysfunctional society. Leaving welfare at the mercy of wealthy individuals as the wealth gap keeps getting bigger and bigger is a losing strategy. It shouldn't be the state of things people should be aiming for.
Fixing government and taxing the rich is the only solution that addresses the core of the issue. Charities can't close wealth gaps, because they lack the power to enforce laws that ensure fair labor and trade practices. Charities can't stop the healthcare industry from bankrupting sick or injured people, because that too requires enforcing the law. Charities can't stop concentration camps.
Charities do have a place in society and they can do enormous good, but can't compensate for a poor government.
Frankly, the notion that government is fundamentally ineffective and only the private sector can fix things is billionaire propaganda. Billionaires undermine government so they can exploit working-class people with fewer constraints. Then they'd use charity to launder their reputation while pushing their own agenda.
Deriding calls for fair taxes and claiming charities will fix things is wishful thinking at best.
Right, donating your present wealth because you expect to continue receiving an astronomical amount of wealth in perpetuity through your company ownership is not all that grand of a gesture.
Certainly better than many alternatives, but it’s not a gesture that should make the median income person feel like existing as an excessively wealthy person should be okay/legal.
In my opinion, personal wealth/asset control above a certain level deemed excessive (perhaps $100 million then adjusted for inflation moving forward) should be taxed at 100% and put into a special fund intended to help pay for social services, healthcare, housing the homeless, etc. In the case of asset control perhaps a good method would be to distribute excessively valued ownership stakes to employees or random members of the public (e.g., many of Elon Musk’s shares in his companies forfeited and distributed to others).
This makes sense as long as public control makes the outcome of that money better than letting the bazillionare control it. I'm not sure which way the actual truth tilts, but I suspect it's sometimes one and sometimes the other.
Still leaves $1.5b, that's a hell of an income if you stick it in any widespread passive fund, and still 100 times more than even the 1% mark in the US.
I would be set for the rest of my life if I got half a mill falling from sky today, I guess I could even make it work with 250k.
Currently I am pondering how absurd amount of money a billion of dollars is. When loads of people can only -earn and eat through/spend not save- $1 million; working their asses off for something like 20 years.
For what it is worth, if you want your withdrawals to last for decades, then you are limited to around a yearly inflation-adjusted cap of around 3% of the original principal per year, gross of taxes, if you invest in low-cost passive index funds. That is a budget of $30K/year for every million you have invested in the market.
If you are interested, the /r/fire and /r/financialindependence subreddits are useful.
> I would be set for the rest of my life if I got half a mill falling from sky today, I guess I could even make it work with 250k.
Maybe you only have a few years left to live? If not, I’m not sure where one can live on $10,000 to $15,000 a year and pay for shelter, food, clothing, and healthcare. It costs more than that per year for health insurance for one adult over 40 in the US.
That is what $500k grants you, chop those in half for $250k.
This is the biggest argument for socialism, you pay the taxes, get free health care and free education, every one gets the same irrespective of their status.
Why do Americans get scared every time they hear "socialism"?
Is it because billionaires have told them it's like "communism"? Are they so brainwashed they can't vote for policies to enable this sort of thing? No wonder the life expectancy in the US is lower than in Europe.
> but to oversee their family's share in the enterprise
Not exactly, he's there to oversee the culture of Berkshire and ensure it's continuity. Buffett is donating all of his wealth (and has already donated $66B), so there isn't a fortune to protect.
Berkshire is an institution of sorts at this point, and requires strong stewardship to prevent enshittification (for lack of a better word).
While I liked your comment enough to upvote, I then realized that Chairman isn't an operational position. It's more a position where the person can exercise ownership of a company (to put it in layman terms). In your analogy he wouldn't be the athlete, more like the person who gets the winning money (assuming his son also has shares) and chooses the trainer/coach of the athletes (which still needs skill btw).
Warren was CEO until 9 months ago. While yes, he's been chairman for 50 years, he's been an exclusive chairman for only 9 months. The role is ambiguous anyways and it's pretty obvious that someone else won't have the authority Warren has. And his son has been a director for 30 years so it's not like he's a new hire
He was chairman and CEO for a long time. Since he has only been a chairman for not that long I don't think it's fair to say that he's been a very active chairman for a long time.
This is a position on the board. The Buffett estate gets an important board role because it represents their family’s large stake. Choosing someone in the family is consistent with this structure.
The article you’re picking the quote from is about estate taxes.
But his family inheriting his ownership of the company contradicts his statements about estate taxes in that article. And passing the chairman position to his son may even be part of a plan to pass wealth to him that avoids estate taxes.
there's nothing wrong with leaving things to your kids to run.
that's the point of the effort after all.
warren as smart as he is was tryna go against the grain of thousands of human evolution. if you train your kids - then most likely they would've values similar to yours. hit or miss but most times a hit.
A lot of rich men, when younger, say that they will not leave so much of the wealth to their children. Then they get older and realize what other old men realized.
>there's nothing wrong with leaving things to your kids to run.
where that's true or not, that's not what happened. this is more like "there's nothing wrong with trying to help your son in his career and getting him a job."
Berkshire Hathaway's market cap is a trillion, and Warren Buffet's net worth has never been close to that, i.e. it's not his company so he's not leaving it to his son to run.
You might admire Warren Buffet's acumen and think he'd be good at picking people, but all (for varying values of all) parents believe in their children so it's not easy to tell if you'd be getting his best advice in this case if you were another major shareholder in Berkshire.
Yeah, the "upside" to nepotism is that, if you or your brother or your buddy did a good job raising the kid, you have someone who has had solid training for longer than it's possible for any other candidate to have had, and a better understanding of their character than you can get from interviewing another candidate a few times. Hiring Joe's kid is a no brainer, if you trust Joe, less risk of a really bad hire even if he doesn't turn out to be stellar.
The other downside of nepotism -- besides the risk that Joe did a shit job and won't admit it or maybe can't evaluate his kid objectively -- is that even if the kid is the bee's knees, a great hire, it's not really fair -- there's almost certainly other candidates who are just as good and trustworthy as Joe's kid but they can't compete with either Joe's kid. It doesn't really matter what sort of references or credentials a candidate can show you if you can serve as a reference for the other candidate. You can't really run a meritocracy like that.
for the downside - countless cultures have had preventative mechanism for that.
if your biological child is an idiot/wasteman - then you could adopt - the Roman Empire ran on adopted children, with biological children seen as wasteman.
the other way it's done e.g with Japanese businesses - again adopt your son in law and give him your surname.
the thing about giving helm to the sons - is usually you would've had a whole lifetime to evaluate the candidate 20+ years. do mistakes happen yeah, but honestly the risk is overblown.
"Company culture" at Berkshire Hathway doesn't mean the same as at most companies. BH buys companies and don't interfere with them. So while BH employs upwards of 100k people, the people whose culture the CEO cares about is probably under 100 people.
This is the answer. While it is very real to talk about "employee culture" as company culture, in this particular case, the "culture" I was talking about was from a corporate/investment/acquisition level. Howards job is not to understand how each company that BRK owns is run, that is the CEO's job. But Howards job is to look at BRK from a high level and make sure that the CEO is executing in the same way that Warren set up, namely – buying companies and stocks at a "fair" price or below, and not micromanaging the companies that they acquire. If the CEO is not living up to that, Howard's (and the board's) one card that they can play is to replace the CEO.
The importance of top executive decisions is overstated, they often do no better than random chance. But their decisions are not where their value lies.
The important part is that they own their decisions, or at least appear to do so. And in doing that, they gain trust for the company, they are the company face. It is more of a performance than a technical job. By that, I don't mean it is fake, people will notice if you don't know what you are talking about, and it won't inspire confidence, which is what leaders try to avoid at all costs.
LLMs will probably be at least as good at decision making (I mean, that's almost a dice roll), and they can be convincing, which is important too, but they are completely lacking in the trust department. No one want to work for a machine, no one want to do business negotiations with a machine either. That's why it is important to have a human on top.
The guy is 71 years old and has built a life long career of his own, people are acting like he just elected a 21 year old nepo baby to run the company.
If you want to split hairs as to what the responsibility of the Chairman of the Board of Directors does, you win.
IDK, maybe I'm a mushbrain but it seems like if someone said they're the chairman of the board, and you told them to their face "well it's not like you run the company..." they'd finish their drink and go talk to someone else for the rest of the night.
Yes, the powerful always do this. It might be challenging to find an exception.
It's not as rewarding to consider that you've reached your position by more good luck than effort, so you hand down advice from on high because clearly you're smarter than everyone else (doesn't help that many people treat you this was to gain access).
Then you continue to do whatever you want despite your own advice because of course... you're smarter than everyone else.
Buffett has been planning this since at least 2011:
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett has told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that after he dies, he wants his son to become non-executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree, would be a good successor, the elder Buffett said, because he understands the values of the company.
Describing him just as a "a farmer" seems kind of ridiculous. Here has extensive business experience unrelated to his farm. From the Wikipedia page on him [1]:
> Buffett was Corporate Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1992 to 1995, Director of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1991 to 1995, Director of the Board of Directors of The GSI Group from 1995 to 2001, director of ConAgra Foods from 2002 to 2006, director of Agro Tech Foods Ltd. until October 26, 2006, and director at Sloan Implement. He became a Lindsay Corporation director in 1995, and served as chairman from 2002 to 2003. and in 2008, announced he would let his term as a director expire in January 2010.
> He is, as of 1992, a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., and President of Buffett Farms.
> Howard G. Buffett has been a Director of The Coca-Cola Company since December 9, 2010. From 1993 to 2004 he was a director of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world's largest Coca-Cola bottler.
> Describing him just as a "a farmer" seems kind of ridiculous.
Not at all. From a New York Times article [1]:
> In 1986, he began running a 400-acre farm north of Omaha that his father purchased for him.
> Howard now manages a 1,500-acre farm in central Illinois that is owned by his family, and still operates the 400-acre farm in Nebraska.
1,900 acres is a lot of farm!
What surprises me more? He is a board member since 1993, but doesn't have a university degree. I am surprised that they did not send him to an executive MBA programme.
From that same NYT article:
> Mr. Buffett, who goes by “Howie,” attended three colleges in the 1970s, Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill.; Chapman College in Orange, Calif.; and the University of California at Irvine. He did not graduate from any of them.
He must actually like farming because he didn't have to become a farmer. Of course, knowing that the family fortune has your back even if the farm doesn't work out probably helps.
Sat on a couple of boards and the non exec chair mostly just guards the culture and can fire the CEO. Abel runs the business. That's a very different job from Howard's.
Rags to rags in three generations, don't forget. These people are not Warren Buffett and most likely do not share his skill, luck, and psychological investment.
Heard that proverb. I'm more inclined to believe rich families from 1400s are rich now. Family wealth can be preserved by sending spare sons and daughters to monastic life.
71 is way past retirement age in many countries. Also didn’t know Warren Buffett is 96 already. Maybe it’s time to pass the torch to someone younger from a different generation
Not true. He bought his first stock at 11 by pooling money with his sister, and sold after it dropped 30% then bounced back up to a profit. The stock was "Cities Service" which became Citgo later.
I've read this years ago in "The Warren Buffett Portfolio", but couldn't find a definitive source for this response quickly, so here (https://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/2014/03/15/the-very-first...) is the reference I used to recount the details above.
Wording. That stock in question he first bought at 13 is Texas Pacific Land and he still owns it. It may not have been "his first ever" but he holds that one still.
Maybe someone can enlighten me, but what's the point of "never selling"? Stocks are not a collectible that you can just look at for fun. Their whole point is to sell for profit, at some time. Maybe it's just me but if you "never cash out", that seems a waste of capital. Or perhaps this is a marketing stunt wealthy people sometimes to? Akin to "I live in a small house".
this is such a funny comment, we are so tech-pilled that we forgot companies traditionally pay dividends and that’s the reason to invest, to share in the profits, not to speculate
As long as you have an accurate sense of the intrinsic value of your shares at any given time; there is a price at which buybacks destroy more value for continuing shareholders than they would lose to taxes on dividends.
I wish I saw this comment two years ago while the stock price of one of our local company is still cheap. I sold all my shared before the price slightly tanked, earning just around 14% profit. Now two years later the price has gone up ~100% and they paid dividends twice during the time.
Should have treated it the old-fashion way, not the modern day-trading way.
If it pays a dividend there is income. Buy and hold is a very common approach to investing. Overtime the cost basis of a good stock will decrease. Some could be sold to invest in other things.
Buy and hold is a hedge against inflation as good if goods increases the the stock reflects the relative expansion of the money supply.
wealth needs to be kept somewhere. you can either keep it in cash where it inflates away. or in bonds that also inflates away but slower or stocks that is a hedge against inflation.
so the point is protecting your wealth against inflation and continuing the compounding over long stretches of time.
you can liquidate as required or even borrow against it like the very rich do.
Technically you can borrow money against your share, if you think your share gains will be higher than the interest rate you essentially have free money (although, obviously, not risk free). So that is a use for never selling shares.
Because if you don't sell you don't pay taxes. You can instead borrow against the asset and get a credit for the interest you pay. The joys of being filthy rich.
To anyone who owns BRK-B shares (or BRK-A if you have that kind of money), over the next decade your money will likely grow on par with if not at a slightly higher rate than keeping it in an S&P 500 Index fund. Regardless of board or management changes, BRK will stay a better long term bet than an index fund. Both options have similar amounts of risk.
In the last 10 years, their returns are nearly identical. However, each decade that you look back, BRK does better and better. But think about that: It's actually slowing down over the last 50 years. I predict will be equal or less the S&P 500 for the next two decades. BRK hardly invests in anything high tech (including bio-tech). They will be missing out on many hypergrowth opportunities.
I hold BRK stocks and I expect it to underperform the market on average (but also be a very good hedge in case of big downturn).
BRK is in big part short term treasuries then a stock portfolio then a core business (insurance, energy, rail, manufacturing etc.). While it's reasonable to expect the core business to outperform there is no way the whole thing is a favorite to do so because cash is a big drag.
> but also be a very good hedge in case of big downturn
Are you aware that BRK cratered during the 2009 stock market crash? During a crash, except gov't bonds, pretty much everything sells off equally. There is a joke on Wall Street after 2009: During a crash, correlation on all assets goes to one (1.0).
There's a big difference between keeping all of your ownership and giving it to the son and paying a huge salary and making him non-executive chairman while giving away most of your wealth.
A legend through early 2000s. The game changed starting 2013-14 and he never adjusted. Bailed or undervalued a bunch of tech names that could have yield 2-3x his actual return. Recent example is them bailing on TSM because of Chinese invasion fears.
A lot of negativity here on Buffett. I doubt any mega-billionaire is a total saint, but by comparison Warren seems like a guy who tried to do good in the world.
We should hope for fewer billionaires, but as long as we have them, we should hope for more Warrens.
Warrens team was famous for extracting undervalued companies from the market, and formed a solid rational investment posture that lasted decades.
By comparison, most other companies including your Bank are often just a group of clowns in cheap suits offloading their mistakes onto suckers. I used to think people that complained were crazy, until I started comparative investing a few ETF.
Warren drove the same old car for years, as unlike most of wall street is not selling his image. You don't have to like the guy, but we can respect his resolve. If he is leaving, it is a bad sign or his story is ending. =3
true he drove the same old car for years, however he traveled via private jet for most of his milage. Which brings me to a fun story:
Buffett originally called corporate private jets an "indefensible" luxury. When he did eventually buy a jet he named it "The Indefensible", later changing the name to "The Indispensable."
There are some things to like. Despite being so wealthy, he advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. I think that in itself is worthy of praise and worthy of ignoring anything else. The fact he distanced himself from Gates because of the Epstein connection. In addition I get the general feeling amassing wealth was more of a game to him. Obviously he did not use it that much or even abuse it. Still, I do think the way he made money was investing in a lot of basically monopolies where it's questionable if that's really doing a service to society. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I don't think that it's very beneficial to really anyone except himself. If you are a big believer in the free market economy and investment (which I am not), you might also disagree with his views. For instance, he was always very openly critical about investments like cars etc. because you can't pick the winner out of the thousands of entrants into this invention. This makes a lot of sense if you want to grow your wealth. But if you think about it, if everyone did that, there would be no car and ultimately nothing else, and so even his returns would be much smaller because the economy would be much smaller. That people rush in to create a booming market where a lot of wealth is ultimately squandered is a prerequisite to progress. In a capitalist world at least.
For a billionaire, it's probably the most we can except from anyone really.
What about all the people that Berkshire provides with gainful employment? What about all the goods and services its businesses provide to communities? What about all the tax it pays? What about the wealth he created for his investors? What about the high standards of corporate governance he upheld in the companies he controlled? You don’t hear about corporate sleaze and kleptocratic management at Berkshire companies. What about the fact that rather than consuming his personal wealth he’s left it mostly to a charitable foundation?
I literally said in my first sentence that the fact he's a billionaire advocating for paying taxes makes him praise worthy and more important than any criticism you might think of. I do think there is a lot to admire and I've used some good advice he's given (not to me personally).
I just think it's interesting that the people who should be criticizing him are actually other capitalists. Because real meaningful economic progress comes from investing in new groundbreaking things, not getting a good return on insurance float or See's Candies. That is all. He says he won't invest in cars, but also that it was obvious it was a machine that would change the world. Coca Cola is another big home run of his, yet a company who's contribution to society is probably overall negative. Etc. That I admire some things or a lot of things even does not mean I idolize anyone.
Berkshire HQ has exactly 27 people. so I think those comments about culture are spot on. but the issue of "what would walt/steve/warren do?" will eventually bite you in the ass.
Family Dynasty of Billionaires. The Dallas TV series was quite good, Larry Hagman as villain - but compared to the real world billionaires, Larry roleplaying as J. R. was a saint compared to what in reality is going on. Can we finally admit that the Epstein network was: a) much bigger than originally known or assumed, and b) not the only criminal abuse network? I mean we already see how much dirt is covered by Trump here. Now imagine we would have real investigations. How much would be revealed ...
1. The next generation has been groomed by Buffet Himself, passing on as much knowledge as he can, but of course, this successor didn't create the fortune, doesn't appreciate it as much, and doesn't have as strong of judgement. However, he is surrounded by the old guard and wise mentors. But as those wither away, he is unable to determine who the worthy successors in his circle should be, slowly the inner circle begins to weaken too.
2. The next successor gets an even less effective set of principles from the first, only knowing off-hand how the money was made in the first place, they are a manager only. They also have no idea how the original people were selected or what makes a good inner circle. Soon it devolves into yes-men and people who seem superficially qualified to manage things.
3. The next successor has little no skills, other than showing up to meetings and going with what advisors say. Because the decision making of the original Buffet mentality has been so diluted, they only know superficial / surface understanding, akin to anyone who read the short books on the subject. They don't know how to do the deep diligence that made BH great. The inner circle is all sycophants, climbers, and clingers. Bad investments, debacles, and poor judgment create losses. Investors begin to panic sell, soon the BH stock crashes in value, losing 90% of the fortune.
And so on... Not hard to see how its like handing off a complex but successful open source project to your progeny instead of the most qualified developers. Pretty soon, its just an unmaintainable mess. They don't understand why things are the way they are, maybe they aren't as good a programmer as great grandpa. They definitely don't know how to hire and keep the best talent that originally built the thing. Pretty soon complexity budget and community good will are exhausted, people move to something newer and more dynamic.
It probably will happen over time as entropy does its thing, but the structure is different than what you describe.
For one, Howard is not the successor, Greg Abel is. Howard is a Stewart of culture, but he is not the leader.
He also isn’t inheriting Buffetts fortune so the generational rot won’t be the same.
Next, both Greg and Howard have been at Berkshire for decades, and however is next up will likely be similar. So there is time to pass on the values.
Laslty, Berkshire is a decentralized company. The company itself has less than 50 employees. All of the companies they own have their own leadership structures and cultures, and Berkshire does not burden itself in managing it. This makes the successor problem a lot easier
Or it could be very beneficial - you don't need to know anything about finance to judge the quality of this particular decision, so it's easier to cast doubt on other gospels
The decision was not based on competency so I can judge based on the factors that were considered. It's clear that this was done because of nepotism and I struggle to find other reasons. While you can hide behind ambiguity (it _could_ be very beneficial) there is no indication that it is at this time.
https://archive.ph/E24O9
I guess Warren’s quote only applies to other people, not him. "It’s like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics." (https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/us/dozens-of-rich-america...)
As I understand, the son is there not to lead the company (Greg Abel is the CEO), but to oversee their family's share in the enterprise.
It's more a ceremonial thing, since as the headline plainly indicates, his son, until today known only as Placeholder Buffet, has been waiting to receive a name for 71 years
It's been a real drag being called "null" when your first name is blank.
He didn't actually name his son Placeholder right?
No, it's a joke on the headline. "Names son."
He no warren musket
Yes he did. It’s a popular Gen Z name.
Heh, when I was young some old guy told me if you lived long enough all the new names you'd see would be stupid or crazy.
He wasn't wrong.
He's there to maintain the very unique culture of the company. I think it's sort of like if they have his son there he of all people should know Buffett's/Berkshire's culture and be able to best maintain it. He's got a few years to figure out a successor. But yeah this is mostly about the unique culture they have.
He also has been on the board since 1993. So it's not like his son is walking in today as the new guy.
He was elected by the board too, rather than directly placed by Warren.
> He was elected by the board too, rather than directly placed by Warren.
I don’t think the last name hurt his chances in 1993 either.
You would want someone who is intimately familiar with the culture to be involved for a long time in case something happened to Warren.
I imagine there were some other candidates in 1993 that didn't share Buffet's genetics.
They can just add those people to the board. It’s not a set number and they don’t regularly add or remove people unless they think they can bring something to the table. Sometimes that is simply “holds a bajillion shares” but if they wanted a High Frequency Trading CEO on the board for insight into that, they could add both his kid and that CEO.
It's also entirely possible he's essentially competent at the job of being a board member which is a pretty do-little job if the CEO is doing a good job.
Bill Gates could have been named but boys will be boys…
I meant in case something happened to Warrent back then, not recently, in case that wasn't clear
The family also owns 30% of the company that gives you board representation by itself
Does this actually work or is this just the best option he's got given he cannot live forever?
I thought he was giving away 99% of his wealth?
Probably in a charitable trust that will be managed by the family. With the trust owning the shares.
He was giving it to the Gates Foundation for Bill & Melinda Gates to manage, but that deal went into limbo when Bill showed up in the Epstein files and Melinda divorced him.
The money he is giving away is going to foundations managed by his children (last I read).
That's recent, just as of the last couple months. Historically the children's foundations have been a sideshow and he's given the bulk of his wealth away to the Gates Foundation. You can see that from the dollar amounts: this year's gift to the children's foundations was 1M BRK-B shares (the equivalent of about $500M) to each, while he's given away a total of $66B, over 120x as much.
Though unlikely the case here, family foundations should always be looked at as a likely source of corruption.
You cannot bribe me directly - that would be caught. However you can donate money to my family foundation and my kids (or spouse) will draw a large salary from it while doing almost nothing and they do some good for the world so it looks like a charity. Of course the kids/spouse will support me in various ways that all rich kids will.
Again, probably not what is happening here, but every time you hear of a family foundation you should ask who they are using it to corruption in some form. Even when it doesn't seem to be you should still look.
Even very large salaries are probably not a very significant amount of wealth for these people. I think this is a case where "all large numbers look the same."
If Warren just directly gave his money to his three children equally, and paid 40% inheritance tax on that money, and then the children each just used 1% of that wealth per year, then they'd each get:
144000000000 * 0.6 / 3 / 100 = $288 million each year.
No foundation pays its CEO 10% of that much money. I think we may have to accept that in fact this is a way to give money to charitable causes, not just horde it.
I wonder if they could even unwind the fortune to pay 40% in cash.
I believe they wouldn't have to because of the stepped-up-basis, but my point is that even if somehow they were paying the full 40%, it's still an inconceivably large amount of money.
In this case yes. However that is not the case for all charities and so you need to look.
It's more of a way to secure the fortune. You can't "secure" the personalities of all your offspring. If one of them gets out of line it could have disastrous consequences. Keeping it in a controlled institution boxes them in.
Even if that kind of corruption isn't there, these charities are still a net negative for society. Why do the super rich rail against taxes but then donate all of their money to family foundations? There are multiple reasons. Pull on that thread.
That’s now in limbo
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/warren-buffett-...
Plenty of other charities in the world. Just because he stopped giving to the Gates Foundation over Epstein ties doesn't mean he won't send the money somewhere else.
Sure. The thing with the Gates Foundation is that it was able to handle billions. Most charities aren't equipped to effectively manage and deploy that kind of wealth. The Gates Foundation made it easy for billionaires to send a large lump sum to one place that was equipped to deal with it.
Having to part out all his wealth $5m at a time to spread it around without overwhelming the systems in place, would be a second act that I'm not sure Buffett has the time for.
That's a good point but the Gates Foundation isn't alone; there are a fair number of other foundations in the $10-100 billion range.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_...
None that operate at the scale of deployment that BMGF operates in.
Since the BMGF is only the fifth largest, how do you justify that statement?
Scale of deployment vs scale of funding.
Do you have a source? Because it seems unlikely to me that charitable foundations with even more capital are not deploying it at similar scale.
https://givingcompass.org/article/who-are-the-worlds-10-larg...
I don't think his son becoming Chairman has anything to do with how much of his wealth he's giving away.
Still leaves an absurd amount of wealth to manage.
Most of them seemingly have control problems where even if they do, it is in the form of a giant money pile still under their control that they give away the returns of, usually also completely under their control.
What's interesting is they cannot, but their ex partners go much further in their giving (Melinda French, MacKenzie Scott, for example).
That is because the exes were not people who had the same drive for money and power. They did not need to cling on to more than they would ever spend.
I wonder if there's a survivorship bias there: those who can and do reject the status quo.
My hot take is that men with extreme wealth and power are desperate to keep it as part of their identity, where the women I mentioned do not have the same character and personality flaws, and therefore use it as a tool to do good because they are not optimizing for status, power, and wealth: they are optimizing to do good. Doesn't always hold, there are exceptions.
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." -- Lord Action
One giant exception was Chuck Feeney, who made $8 billion on duty free shops and gave almost all of it away, much of it anonymously. By the end of his life he and his wife had a couple million and lived in a rented apartment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Philanthropies
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Great human, thanks for mentioning.
Giving away your fortune in secret is so much more virtuous than doing it with a giant foundation with your name on it. Much respect.
When they agreed in Nashville to rename the airport after Dolly Parton, all of the people commenting on the TV clip said it was well-deserved.
Some were more emotional than others, but one of the proponents was very touched, she admired Parton so much because Dolly set an example of how to be as successful as a person can be, and not keep a billion for yourself.
I can't find the clip now, but it was from the heart.
I think more likely is that bill and Jeff built their wealth through their businesses, which they are still directly involved in. Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up
I think there's also a question of efficacy. Bill and Jeff are really good at turning $1 into $10. Melinda and Mackenzie? Not so much. If bill or Jeff wanted to maximize the amount they can give, the best strategy would be for them to continually earn until they die, and then donate it.
That's what it's about though. The amount THEY can give, not the benefit to humanity.
It's not like Bill and Jeff actually built any of these products themselves. Microsoft bought DOS. Right place, right time for that Nepo baby. Bezos at least had a normal family.
Bezos didn't build Amazon? First I heard of that
I agree that Bill and Jeff are better at exploitation at scale. That’s how you become that wealthy. We are lucky they’re divorced and the wealth is in the hands of better stewards to distribute it to do good.
I agreed right off the bat, they definitely reached scale like few others, but maybe it might have been the way they grew without stopping more so than today's well-known scaling process that got them there.
Doubtless they got in position early to take advantage of many potential upswings.
> Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up
On the backs of the government and its people's tax money with nothing given back.
There's a difference in men and women... until there's not. Very convenient.
I know what you mean, nobody in North America understands vive la différence outside of French Canadians and Louisiana Cajuns.
And some of them only at their own convenience.
I wouldn't let it bother me, son of a gun I'm gonna have big fun on the bayou :)
edit: not my downvote btw
There's a large body of medical research around women having more empathy than men, specifically around brain volume in the inferior frontal gyrus. Does it always hold? There are always exceptions. Broadly speaking, in most cases, it is a function of brain structure, per person. Do you have many examples of exceptional wealthy and powerful women who are monsters? I do not. I welcome corrections and citations, and am happy to be proven wrong on this.
TLDR Show me the brain fMRI and I will show you the soul. In some cases, facial structure is enough for weak but meaningful signal (as a proxy for brain structure).
(politics are also brain structure, citations in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634883)
Well he's not dead yet.
That is what I told the tax man...they did not buy it...
It bothers me how he and other billionaires think that it's all worth it letting them get so rich because they "give it away". It's almost insulting.
You know who could have used all that money all this time? The people you leeched it away from via this thing known as taxes and a functioning government. But no, let's give it away to private foundations who will serve only their needs.
He has. His family manages the foundation that owns BRK stock.
Isn’t that the usual loophole though? He definitely continues to donate large amounts but I always question setting up a trust that the kids run.
It’s not really a “loophole,” it’s a standard way to give away absurd sums of money.
Have you ever tried to donate billions of dollars? It’s actually extremely difficult.
You have to find causes you’re passionate about/things that society needs, find the correct charities to give the money to, make sure your money actually goes towards the thing they say it will (this is difficult), and then figure out how much you can actually donate (you can’t just give N dollars to company Y. They’ve got zero experience managing that much money, and no way to scale into doing it efficiently.)
What happens then is you have $100b to donate, and mostly only do it $10m at a time or less.
Warren’s kids are old now. They’ve all been donating money for YEARS (it’s a mandatory part of their trust).
So yeah, you receive tax benefits by transferring shares to a foundation you also control, but that money is now earmarked for charity. It doesn’t flow both ways, and the laws on this are very tight (bad actors will find a way, but what’s new?).
Sure that is the typical way to donate your wealth but there are many other ways than giving it with control to your children. I have no judgement but doing it this way is a nice way to move money within your family.
Everyone does it different and I have no judgement but you could just as easily pick a quorum of folks to do the job with a very explicit timeline. Charitable donations are quite broad in the US. So sure lots of wealthy folk don’t this way but not everyone!
Can you just as easily pick a quorum of folks? It seems to me that no matter what, you're going to have to choose people you know and be accused of nepotism because those are the people you can actually assess, and in the case of children, hopefully raise/influence to be on the same page as you.
You could always donate it to the US government, but then it'll be used to go start some wars, so that won't work. You could put it in some weird trust where random people can democratically decide what to do with it, but all you have to do is look at the government to see how good of decisions that leads to. So truly what's the alternative?
Easy is relative but someone in his position with decades of experience working with talented individuals, yes. Nothing is perfect but I have seen other foundations structured where it’s a mixture of descendants and leaders that worked with the individuals. We are going to be picking at hairs though since this is all anecdotal and we don’t know how it will play out. Some of kids foundation work has been a bit self-serving but it’s there money to spend. It could also just as easily be that the 3 kids are different enough that requiring all three to agree prevents most of the opportunity.
If it's so difficult, maybe they could take the easy option and, you know, properly fund the government to build the shared infrastructure on which we all rely by paying tax proportional to their wealth.
Warren Buffet made the largest single tax payment in US history last year. He doesn't play any games.
You mean fund ICE and build some more concentration camps?
Approximately 1% of the federal budget is infrastructure. There are huge advantages to donating to a charity that actually does something productive instead of the federal waste machine.
Or maybe, just maybe, a system that doesn't create massive concentration of wealth won't try to divert people's focus by pitting people against each other and building concentration camps. Governments aren't fundamentally wasteful. In fact, an effective government is an absolute requirement for functioning healthcare, fair wages, consumer protection, and actual public safety that protects all people equally.
This isn't to diminish all the good things charities have done, but charities are fundamentally band-aid solutions to a dysfunctional society. Leaving welfare at the mercy of wealthy individuals as the wealth gap keeps getting bigger and bigger is a losing strategy. It shouldn't be the state of things people should be aiming for.
Cool. Give me a call when our government isn't wasteful and destructive, then we can talk about the relative benefits of taxes versus charity.
Until then, I'm going to look at the real world and conclude that charities do massively more good
Pretending that reality is other than it is nothing short of delusion, living in a fantasy.
Fixing government and taxing the rich is the only solution that addresses the core of the issue. Charities can't close wealth gaps, because they lack the power to enforce laws that ensure fair labor and trade practices. Charities can't stop the healthcare industry from bankrupting sick or injured people, because that too requires enforcing the law. Charities can't stop concentration camps.
Charities do have a place in society and they can do enormous good, but can't compensate for a poor government.
Frankly, the notion that government is fundamentally ineffective and only the private sector can fix things is billionaire propaganda. Billionaires undermine government so they can exploit working-class people with fewer constraints. Then they'd use charity to launder their reputation while pushing their own agenda.
Deriding calls for fair taxes and claiming charities will fix things is wishful thinking at best.
https://www.investopedia.com/warren-buffett-paid-billions-to...
Right, donating your present wealth because you expect to continue receiving an astronomical amount of wealth in perpetuity through your company ownership is not all that grand of a gesture.
Certainly better than many alternatives, but it’s not a gesture that should make the median income person feel like existing as an excessively wealthy person should be okay/legal.
In my opinion, personal wealth/asset control above a certain level deemed excessive (perhaps $100 million then adjusted for inflation moving forward) should be taxed at 100% and put into a special fund intended to help pay for social services, healthcare, housing the homeless, etc. In the case of asset control perhaps a good method would be to distribute excessively valued ownership stakes to employees or random members of the public (e.g., many of Elon Musk’s shares in his companies forfeited and distributed to others).
This makes sense as long as public control makes the outcome of that money better than letting the bazillionare control it. I'm not sure which way the actual truth tilts, but I suspect it's sometimes one and sometimes the other.
Still leaves $1.5b, that's a hell of an income if you stick it in any widespread passive fund, and still 100 times more than even the 1% mark in the US.
1% of $140 billion is still $1.4 billion.
Can he give me a few million then?
Few million?
I would be set for the rest of my life if I got half a mill falling from sky today, I guess I could even make it work with 250k.
Currently I am pondering how absurd amount of money a billion of dollars is. When loads of people can only -earn and eat through/spend not save- $1 million; working their asses off for something like 20 years.
For what it is worth, if you want your withdrawals to last for decades, then you are limited to around a yearly inflation-adjusted cap of around 3% of the original principal per year, gross of taxes, if you invest in low-cost passive index funds. That is a budget of $30K/year for every million you have invested in the market.
If you are interested, the /r/fire and /r/financialindependence subreddits are useful.
> pondering how absurd amount of money…
You may enjoy reading Brewster’s Millions, or watching one of the many movie adaptations made over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster's_Millions
> I would be set for the rest of my life if I got half a mill falling from sky today, I guess I could even make it work with 250k.
Maybe you only have a few years left to live? If not, I’m not sure where one can live on $10,000 to $15,000 a year and pay for shelter, food, clothing, and healthcare. It costs more than that per year for health insurance for one adult over 40 in the US.
That is what $500k grants you, chop those in half for $250k.
This is the biggest argument for socialism, you pay the taxes, get free health care and free education, every one gets the same irrespective of their status. Why do Americans get scared every time they hear "socialism"? Is it because billionaires have told them it's like "communism"? Are they so brainwashed they can't vote for policies to enable this sort of thing? No wonder the life expectancy in the US is lower than in Europe.
And me please. 2 mill.
Rich people donate for tax and the ultra-rich donate without actually donating it :)
he is giving 99% to the buffet family foundation ofc
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> but to oversee their family's share in the enterprise
Not exactly, he's there to oversee the culture of Berkshire and ensure it's continuity. Buffett is donating all of his wealth (and has already donated $66B), so there isn't a fortune to protect.
Berkshire is an institution of sorts at this point, and requires strong stewardship to prevent enshittification (for lack of a better word).
Some better words just off the top of my head:
- to prevent institutional degradation.
- to avoid cultural shift for the worse.
- to keep hold of and nurture that culture.
Those phrases soften what happens too much.
no, enshittification is accurate.
And this is how you get constitutional monarchy.
While I liked your comment enough to upvote, I then realized that Chairman isn't an operational position. It's more a position where the person can exercise ownership of a company (to put it in layman terms). In your analogy he wouldn't be the athlete, more like the person who gets the winning money (assuming his son also has shares) and chooses the trainer/coach of the athletes (which still needs skill btw).
But we have been told for a long time that Buffett was a very active Chairman.
Warren was CEO until 9 months ago. While yes, he's been chairman for 50 years, he's been an exclusive chairman for only 9 months. The role is ambiguous anyways and it's pretty obvious that someone else won't have the authority Warren has. And his son has been a director for 30 years so it's not like he's a new hire
I appreciate this correction as I had misremembered his dual roles.
He was chairman and CEO for a long time. Since he has only been a chairman for not that long I don't think it's fair to say that he's been a very active chairman for a long time.
I appreciate this correction as I had misremembered his dual roles.
Whose strategy is explicitly to hold good stocks for a very long time.
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Maybe the implication is that Warren thinks it’s significantly easier to run a wealth fund than get gold in the Olympics. I would probably agree.
This is a position on the board. The Buffett estate gets an important board role because it represents their family’s large stake. Choosing someone in the family is consistent with this structure.
The article you’re picking the quote from is about estate taxes.
But his family inheriting his ownership of the company contradicts his statements about estate taxes in that article. And passing the chairman position to his son may even be part of a plan to pass wealth to him that avoids estate taxes.
there's nothing wrong with leaving things to your kids to run.
that's the point of the effort after all.
warren as smart as he is was tryna go against the grain of thousands of human evolution. if you train your kids - then most likely they would've values similar to yours. hit or miss but most times a hit.
A lot of rich men, when younger, say that they will not leave so much of the wealth to their children. Then they get older and realize what other old men realized.
Which is what?
That it's a lot cooler saying noble things than actually DOING noble things.
Evolutionary psychology is stronger than whatever they thought previously.
Sad.
You only have to get rich once, you will not get rich for the second time, and opportunity to get rich occurs only once in every many generations.
We live in neo feudalism. The hard part is getting to a billion but once you do your family will be part of the elite for centuries.
What’s wrong with that? Are you more entitled to Warren Buffets billions than his children are?
Me personally? No. The labor whose value he extracted and hoarded through his investing? Yes, they are.
Don't grow old
These are jobs with titles we are talking about it says nothing about Buffets assets or will.
>there's nothing wrong with leaving things to your kids to run.
where that's true or not, that's not what happened. this is more like "there's nothing wrong with trying to help your son in his career and getting him a job."
Berkshire Hathaway's market cap is a trillion, and Warren Buffet's net worth has never been close to that, i.e. it's not his company so he's not leaving it to his son to run.
You might admire Warren Buffet's acumen and think he'd be good at picking people, but all (for varying values of all) parents believe in their children so it's not easy to tell if you'd be getting his best advice in this case if you were another major shareholder in Berkshire.
Yeah, the "upside" to nepotism is that, if you or your brother or your buddy did a good job raising the kid, you have someone who has had solid training for longer than it's possible for any other candidate to have had, and a better understanding of their character than you can get from interviewing another candidate a few times. Hiring Joe's kid is a no brainer, if you trust Joe, less risk of a really bad hire even if he doesn't turn out to be stellar.
The other downside of nepotism -- besides the risk that Joe did a shit job and won't admit it or maybe can't evaluate his kid objectively -- is that even if the kid is the bee's knees, a great hire, it's not really fair -- there's almost certainly other candidates who are just as good and trustworthy as Joe's kid but they can't compete with either Joe's kid. It doesn't really matter what sort of references or credentials a candidate can show you if you can serve as a reference for the other candidate. You can't really run a meritocracy like that.
for the downside - countless cultures have had preventative mechanism for that.
if your biological child is an idiot/wasteman - then you could adopt - the Roman Empire ran on adopted children, with biological children seen as wasteman.
the other way it's done e.g with Japanese businesses - again adopt your son in law and give him your surname.
the thing about giving helm to the sons - is usually you would've had a whole lifetime to evaluate the candidate 20+ years. do mistakes happen yeah, but honestly the risk is overblown.
The Chairman position is to protect company culture, not make operational decisions.
Not sure any chairman has their ear to the ground to fully understand the culture within their organization.
I never saw our CEO in person, never saw our chairman even on a webinar.
And yes it's not their job to be that low level, but they can't have an idea of the culture either.
Berkshire itself has less than 50 employees, so it's absolutely possible to do this.
"Company culture" at Berkshire Hathway doesn't mean the same as at most companies. BH buys companies and don't interfere with them. So while BH employs upwards of 100k people, the people whose culture the CEO cares about is probably under 100 people.
This is the answer. While it is very real to talk about "employee culture" as company culture, in this particular case, the "culture" I was talking about was from a corporate/investment/acquisition level. Howards job is not to understand how each company that BRK owns is run, that is the CEO's job. But Howards job is to look at BRK from a high level and make sure that the CEO is executing in the same way that Warren set up, namely – buying companies and stocks at a "fair" price or below, and not micromanaging the companies that they acquire. If the CEO is not living up to that, Howard's (and the board's) one card that they can play is to replace the CEO.
sounds like a role that can be replaced by GPT
I actually asked GPT that question some time ago.
The importance of top executive decisions is overstated, they often do no better than random chance. But their decisions are not where their value lies.
The important part is that they own their decisions, or at least appear to do so. And in doing that, they gain trust for the company, they are the company face. It is more of a performance than a technical job. By that, I don't mean it is fake, people will notice if you don't know what you are talking about, and it won't inspire confidence, which is what leaders try to avoid at all costs.
LLMs will probably be at least as good at decision making (I mean, that's almost a dice roll), and they can be convincing, which is important too, but they are completely lacking in the trust department. No one want to work for a machine, no one want to do business negotiations with a machine either. That's why it is important to have a human on top.
No, the chairman is there to represent the biggest shareholders and defend the common interest of getting the best out of the company.
Oh it applies to him. He just doesn’t care.
Warren's son has been a leader at Berkshire for a very long time. He was voted in by the board, not Warren.
Here's his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett
I’m sure his dad had nothing to do with it and it’s just a coincidence.
His dad probably has a lot to do with it.
You think he didn't teach his children anything about finance?
The guy is 71 years old and has built a life long career of his own, people are acting like he just elected a 21 year old nepo baby to run the company.
Exactly! They elected a 71 year old nepo baby to run the company. Vastly different.
His son isn't running the company. The company has a CEO, who isn't a member of the Buffet family.
If you want to split hairs as to what the responsibility of the Chairman of the Board of Directors does, you win.
IDK, maybe I'm a mushbrain but it seems like if someone said they're the chairman of the board, and you told them to their face "well it's not like you run the company..." they'd finish their drink and go talk to someone else for the rest of the night.
He also invested his personal money in securities that Berkshire itself owned, thus breaking one of the rules of Berkshire itself.
His son isn’t running the company, he’s just the board chair which has fairly limited power on its own.
Yes, the powerful always do this. It might be challenging to find an exception.
It's not as rewarding to consider that you've reached your position by more good luck than effort, so you hand down advice from on high because clearly you're smarter than everyone else (doesn't help that many people treat you this was to gain access).
Then you continue to do whatever you want despite your own advice because of course... you're smarter than everyone else.
"Warren"? You know him personally?
Buffett has been planning this since at least 2011:
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett has told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that after he dies, he wants his son to become non-executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree, would be a good successor, the elder Buffett said, because he understands the values of the company.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-wants-farmer...
Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree, would be a good successor, the elder Buffett said, because he understands the values of the company.
I’m not usually about hereditary succession, but this is an exception I could get behind.
Describing him just as a "a farmer" seems kind of ridiculous. Here has extensive business experience unrelated to his farm. From the Wikipedia page on him [1]:
> Buffett was Corporate Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1992 to 1995, Director of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1991 to 1995, Director of the Board of Directors of The GSI Group from 1995 to 2001, director of ConAgra Foods from 2002 to 2006, director of Agro Tech Foods Ltd. until October 26, 2006, and director at Sloan Implement. He became a Lindsay Corporation director in 1995, and served as chairman from 2002 to 2003. and in 2008, announced he would let his term as a director expire in January 2010.
> He is, as of 1992, a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., and President of Buffett Farms.
> Howard G. Buffett has been a Director of The Coca-Cola Company since December 9, 2010. From 1993 to 2004 he was a director of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world's largest Coca-Cola bottler.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett
What surprises me more? He is a board member since 1993, but doesn't have a university degree. I am surprised that they did not send him to an executive MBA programme.
From that same NYT article:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/business/warren-buffett-s...He must actually like farming because he didn't have to become a farmer. Of course, knowing that the family fortune has your back even if the farm doesn't work out probably helps.
> Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree
What absolute humble beginnings ;-)
Sat on a couple of boards and the non exec chair mostly just guards the culture and can fire the CEO. Abel runs the business. That's a very different job from Howard's.
Best wishes and all. But given Berkshire's scale, and the son's age (71), questions about the next succession plan seem appropriate.
Also, since the NYT says nothing else about the son: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett In context, his recent involvement in local politics seems rather odd.
Sounds like there's a grandson who's being groomed for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Warren_Buffett
They all seem very similar to the British "new nobility" in the mid-late 19th century, albeit with less syphilis and opium.
Rags to rags in three generations, don't forget. These people are not Warren Buffett and most likely do not share his skill, luck, and psychological investment.
Heard that proverb. I'm more inclined to believe rich families from 1400s are rich now. Family wealth can be preserved by sending spare sons and daughters to monastic life.
https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...
The grandson was in FFA (Future Farmers of America) in high school. My guess is the Buffett family values environment was not typical suburban USA.
Buffett’s giving almost all his wealth away so not the usual rags-to-rags.
The grandson has a pretty successful career already anyways (helped obviously by his relation to Warren)
Think you’re begging the question with that final phrase.
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You should spend less time on 4chan.
This is how groomed is used, yes. The sexually overt connotation is a very recent thing.
The word has a many meanings - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groom
Squinting at a [Compact] 1971 Oxford English Dictionary - the pedophilic meaning postdates that edition.
71 is way past retirement age in many countries. Also didn’t know Warren Buffett is 96 already. Maybe it’s time to pass the torch to someone younger from a different generation
Many people do not know this but he still holds the stock that he first bought as a 13y old. It is now worth 8+ figures!
Not true. He bought his first stock at 11 by pooling money with his sister, and sold after it dropped 30% then bounced back up to a profit. The stock was "Cities Service" which became Citgo later.
I've read this years ago in "The Warren Buffett Portfolio", but couldn't find a definitive source for this response quickly, so here (https://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/2014/03/15/the-very-first...) is the reference I used to recount the details above.
Wording. That stock in question he first bought at 13 is Texas Pacific Land and he still owns it. It may not have been "his first ever" but he holds that one still.
To be fair that was around the time Columbus was sailing across the ocean blue
Maybe someone can enlighten me, but what's the point of "never selling"? Stocks are not a collectible that you can just look at for fun. Their whole point is to sell for profit, at some time. Maybe it's just me but if you "never cash out", that seems a waste of capital. Or perhaps this is a marketing stunt wealthy people sometimes to? Akin to "I live in a small house".
this is such a funny comment, we are so tech-pilled that we forgot companies traditionally pay dividends and that’s the reason to invest, to share in the profits, not to speculate
Interestingly enough, Berkshire Hathaway is famous for never paying dividends (except once, I think), and instead use the income to speculate on buying new companies. https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/09/12/berkshire-hathaway...
Speculate isn't the right word to use for Berkshire's investments.
Buybacks are dividends by another name.
But in that case, you do have to sell to get any cash out, so "never selling" is similar to reinvesting dividends.
Why would I want someone creating taxable events for me? Under the current tax regime, buybacks are vastly superior.
As long as you have an accurate sense of the intrinsic value of your shares at any given time; there is a price at which buybacks destroy more value for continuing shareholders than they would lose to taxes on dividends.
I wish I saw this comment two years ago while the stock price of one of our local company is still cheap. I sold all my shared before the price slightly tanked, earning just around 14% profit. Now two years later the price has gone up ~100% and they paid dividends twice during the time.
Should have treated it the old-fashion way, not the modern day-trading way.
If it pays a dividend there is income. Buy and hold is a very common approach to investing. Overtime the cost basis of a good stock will decrease. Some could be sold to invest in other things.
Buy and hold is a hedge against inflation as good if goods increases the the stock reflects the relative expansion of the money supply.
wealth needs to be kept somewhere. you can either keep it in cash where it inflates away. or in bonds that also inflates away but slower or stocks that is a hedge against inflation.
so the point is protecting your wealth against inflation and continuing the compounding over long stretches of time.
you can liquidate as required or even borrow against it like the very rich do.
Technically you can borrow money against your share, if you think your share gains will be higher than the interest rate you essentially have free money (although, obviously, not risk free). So that is a use for never selling shares.
Also some shares pay dividends.
Because if you don't sell you don't pay taxes. You can instead borrow against the asset and get a credit for the interest you pay. The joys of being filthy rich.
To anyone who owns BRK-B shares (or BRK-A if you have that kind of money), over the next decade your money will likely grow on par with if not at a slightly higher rate than keeping it in an S&P 500 Index fund. Regardless of board or management changes, BRK will stay a better long term bet than an index fund. Both options have similar amounts of risk.
How are you this confident about the future?
Easy, by not understanding it.
This is a pretty bold claim, but it is HN talking about investments.
From here you can compare BRK vs S&P 500 historical performance: https://www.alphaspread.com/comparison/nyse/brk.b/vs/indx/gs...
In the last 10 years, their returns are nearly identical. However, each decade that you look back, BRK does better and better. But think about that: It's actually slowing down over the last 50 years. I predict will be equal or less the S&P 500 for the next two decades. BRK hardly invests in anything high tech (including bio-tech). They will be missing out on many hypergrowth opportunities.
I hold BRK stocks and I expect it to underperform the market on average (but also be a very good hedge in case of big downturn). BRK is in big part short term treasuries then a stock portfolio then a core business (insurance, energy, rail, manufacturing etc.). While it's reasonable to expect the core business to outperform there is no way the whole thing is a favorite to do so because cash is a big drag.
Hasn't done so great since Buffett announced his retirement. Starting to recover lately.
There's a big difference between keeping all of your ownership and giving it to the son and paying a huge salary and making him non-executive chairman while giving away most of your wealth.
A legend through early 2000s. The game changed starting 2013-14 and he never adjusted. Bailed or undervalued a bunch of tech names that could have yield 2-3x his actual return. Recent example is them bailing on TSM because of Chinese invasion fears.
TSMC? They did well investing in BYD though.
A lot of negativity here on Buffett. I doubt any mega-billionaire is a total saint, but by comparison Warren seems like a guy who tried to do good in the world.
We should hope for fewer billionaires, but as long as we have them, we should hope for more Warrens.
Warrens team was famous for extracting undervalued companies from the market, and formed a solid rational investment posture that lasted decades.
By comparison, most other companies including your Bank are often just a group of clowns in cheap suits offloading their mistakes onto suckers. I used to think people that complained were crazy, until I started comparative investing a few ETF.
Warren drove the same old car for years, as unlike most of wall street is not selling his image. You don't have to like the guy, but we can respect his resolve. If he is leaving, it is a bad sign or his story is ending. =3
true he drove the same old car for years, however he traveled via private jet for most of his milage. Which brings me to a fun story:
Buffett originally called corporate private jets an "indefensible" luxury. When he did eventually buy a jet he named it "The Indefensible", later changing the name to "The Indispensable."
The guy has a great sense of humor.
This is an incredibly sad perspective to have. We have to have higher standards than this, man.
Why, what's wrong with it?
There are some things to like. Despite being so wealthy, he advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. I think that in itself is worthy of praise and worthy of ignoring anything else. The fact he distanced himself from Gates because of the Epstein connection. In addition I get the general feeling amassing wealth was more of a game to him. Obviously he did not use it that much or even abuse it. Still, I do think the way he made money was investing in a lot of basically monopolies where it's questionable if that's really doing a service to society. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I don't think that it's very beneficial to really anyone except himself. If you are a big believer in the free market economy and investment (which I am not), you might also disagree with his views. For instance, he was always very openly critical about investments like cars etc. because you can't pick the winner out of the thousands of entrants into this invention. This makes a lot of sense if you want to grow your wealth. But if you think about it, if everyone did that, there would be no car and ultimately nothing else, and so even his returns would be much smaller because the economy would be much smaller. That people rush in to create a booming market where a lot of wealth is ultimately squandered is a prerequisite to progress. In a capitalist world at least.
For a billionaire, it's probably the most we can except from anyone really.
What about all the people that Berkshire provides with gainful employment? What about all the goods and services its businesses provide to communities? What about all the tax it pays? What about the wealth he created for his investors? What about the high standards of corporate governance he upheld in the companies he controlled? You don’t hear about corporate sleaze and kleptocratic management at Berkshire companies. What about the fact that rather than consuming his personal wealth he’s left it mostly to a charitable foundation?
Doesn’t count for much?
I literally said in my first sentence that the fact he's a billionaire advocating for paying taxes makes him praise worthy and more important than any criticism you might think of. I do think there is a lot to admire and I've used some good advice he's given (not to me personally).
I just think it's interesting that the people who should be criticizing him are actually other capitalists. Because real meaningful economic progress comes from investing in new groundbreaking things, not getting a good return on insurance float or See's Candies. That is all. He says he won't invest in cars, but also that it was obvious it was a machine that would change the world. Coca Cola is another big home run of his, yet a company who's contribution to society is probably overall negative. Etc. That I admire some things or a lot of things even does not mean I idolize anyone.
So after all no one could be trusted
Berkshire HQ has exactly 27 people. so I think those comments about culture are spot on. but the issue of "what would walt/steve/warren do?" will eventually bite you in the ass.
Instantly reminded me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_67JbvXLrmw
(I'm not hating on Buffet/Berkshire)
I think it would be tedious to be that wealthy. You’d spend all your time managing the money and associated stresses.
A super comfortable life with enough money to get you to 105 years old that all you need.
> You’d spend all your time managing the money and associated stresses.
That's what your personal executive team is for.
Rich people tend to say they will give their money away but in fact retain control of it.
Is this the same son that was a drug addict for a long time or am i misremembering history?
Nothing quite as important in life as picking your parents well.
I could have sworn this already happened over a year ago
That was his resignation as CEO.
He had a good record with his pick until this one.
Chillin' with Tim Cook :)
"It's not nepotism when I (or Soros) do it."
good old meritocracy
Family Dynasty of Billionaires. The Dallas TV series was quite good, Larry Hagman as villain - but compared to the real world billionaires, Larry roleplaying as J. R. was a saint compared to what in reality is going on. Can we finally admit that the Epstein network was: a) much bigger than originally known or assumed, and b) not the only criminal abuse network? I mean we already see how much dirt is covered by Trump here. Now imagine we would have real investigations. How much would be revealed ...
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Warren Jong-il
Nepo dynasty.
It'll all burn eventually.
Yes, it could happen:
1. The next generation has been groomed by Buffet Himself, passing on as much knowledge as he can, but of course, this successor didn't create the fortune, doesn't appreciate it as much, and doesn't have as strong of judgement. However, he is surrounded by the old guard and wise mentors. But as those wither away, he is unable to determine who the worthy successors in his circle should be, slowly the inner circle begins to weaken too.
2. The next successor gets an even less effective set of principles from the first, only knowing off-hand how the money was made in the first place, they are a manager only. They also have no idea how the original people were selected or what makes a good inner circle. Soon it devolves into yes-men and people who seem superficially qualified to manage things.
3. The next successor has little no skills, other than showing up to meetings and going with what advisors say. Because the decision making of the original Buffet mentality has been so diluted, they only know superficial / surface understanding, akin to anyone who read the short books on the subject. They don't know how to do the deep diligence that made BH great. The inner circle is all sycophants, climbers, and clingers. Bad investments, debacles, and poor judgment create losses. Investors begin to panic sell, soon the BH stock crashes in value, losing 90% of the fortune.
And so on... Not hard to see how its like handing off a complex but successful open source project to your progeny instead of the most qualified developers. Pretty soon, its just an unmaintainable mess. They don't understand why things are the way they are, maybe they aren't as good a programmer as great grandpa. They definitely don't know how to hire and keep the best talent that originally built the thing. Pretty soon complexity budget and community good will are exhausted, people move to something newer and more dynamic.
It probably will happen over time as entropy does its thing, but the structure is different than what you describe.
For one, Howard is not the successor, Greg Abel is. Howard is a Stewart of culture, but he is not the leader.
He also isn’t inheriting Buffetts fortune so the generational rot won’t be the same.
Next, both Greg and Howard have been at Berkshire for decades, and however is next up will likely be similar. So there is time to pass on the values.
Laslty, Berkshire is a decentralized company. The company itself has less than 50 employees. All of the companies they own have their own leadership structures and cultures, and Berkshire does not burden itself in managing it. This makes the successor problem a lot easier
At least the next generations past 2-3 probably won't have the genetic problems we saw with the Habsburgs
Hard concur, and I bet every single one of these who downvoted are nepobabies themselves.
People take what he does and says as gospel so knowing he went with monarchy tier nepotism is going to be very annoying.
Or it could be very beneficial - you don't need to know anything about finance to judge the quality of this particular decision, so it's easier to cast doubt on other gospels
The decision was not based on competency so I can judge based on the factors that were considered. It's clear that this was done because of nepotism and I struggle to find other reasons. While you can hide behind ambiguity (it _could_ be very beneficial) there is no indication that it is at this time.