Abel takes over for Buffett in less than two weeks. Wall Street has some advice for new Berkshire CEO
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With less than two weeks until Warren Buffett leaves as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, some on Wall Street have recommendations for new CEO Greg Abel.
Glenview Trust CIO Bill Stone says the most important thing Abel can do is “not try to be Warren Buffett.”
Buffett and Charlie Munger he said Yahoo FinanceThey were the “best duo” of all time when it comes to investing. “Trying to beat them at their own game is probably not the right thing to do.”
Stone thinks Abel should focus on increasing operating earnings, reducing the number of shares outstanding and being ready to seize opportunities as they arise.
Gregory Abel, executive vice president of non-insurance operations for Berkshire Hathaway, meets with shareholders in the exhibit hall during the Berkshire Hathaway Inc annual shareholders meeting on May 3, 2024 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States.
Scott Morgan | Reuters
Open Yahoo Finance’s “Market Domination,Boyar Research President Jonathan Boyar told CNBC alumnus Josh Lipton that the best thing Abel could do to gain Wall Street’s trust was “personally buy an extremely large amount of Berkshire stock and put his money where his mouth is.”
according to 2025 annual meeting proxyAbel already owns what Boyar calls “a fair amount” of Berkshire stock, currently worth $171 million, although he notes that “all of that was purchased when Buffett ran the company.”
Boyar expects Abel to impose much more management oversight on subsidiaries than Buffett, who is famous for his hands-off approach.
As a result of this decentralization, Boyar says, “There’s probably a lot of fat to cut. There are divisions that could probably be consolidated. There’s a lot of things they could do to increase profitability that Buffett doesn’t want to do.”
“Buffett is the greatest allocator of capital and the greatest investor of all time. He is not known as the greatest manager of all time. Greg Abel can do things that he cannot or will not do.”
Berkshire’s B shares fell 15% in three months after Buffett announced at his annual meeting in May that he planned to step down as CEO at the end of the year.
They narrowed that decline to 8.4% as of Friday’s close.
Is Berkshire a buyout entering the Greg Abel era?
Motley Fool’s David Jagielski writes Buffett’s long tenure has given the company “ample time to prepare for his successor” and Abel is “well prepared” to become CEO.
He predicts Abel’s approach “won’t be much different” from Buffett’s, but there could still be significant changes to Berkshire’s portfolio. Adding a stake to a major tech stock Alphabet in the third quarter may have offered investors a “glimpse” of the future.
Berkshire, which is also “cautiously optimistic,” could put a greater weight on growth stocks and “move away from slow-growth investments like companies.” Kraft Heinz“
Jagielski expects Berkshire to be “an excellent buy” for next year and beyond. “If its value declines after Buffett leaves, that would make it an even more attractive investment to buy.”
Mel Casey of FBB Capital Partners explains Yahoo Finance The diversity of Berkshire’s subsidiaries gives it an “all-weather” quality, so “you can almost think of it as a lower-risk alternative to having a broader market.”
He sees Berkshire as “pretty reasonably valued” in “a year when US major stocks were fairly overvalued.”
On the downside, Casey warns there’s a risk of losing the “Buffett premium.”
“There’s definitely a warning that some of the core investors are invested in Buffett rather than the actual fundamentals of the company.”
Berkshire’s BNSF: Major rail merger ‘significant threat’ to consumers
A GE AC4400CW diesel-electric locomotive in Union Pacific livery is seen near Union Station in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 2022.
BingGuan | Reuters
Quoting UNP CEO Jim Vena: Reuters He said he was confident the deal would be approved. “If we remain inactive, we will be left behind. I am not interested in that. The benefits of this process are undeniable.”
Buffett told CNBC last august He said Berkshire wouldn’t try to counter a possible UP-NSC combination by merging BNSF CSXbut both railwaysa collaboration“Providing seamless, efficient, coast-to-coast solutions for shipping between the western and eastern United States.”
BNSF’s routes operate in the western United States, while CSX operates in the east.
BUFFET ON THE INTERNET
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE
Can Berkshire’s culture last for decades? (2016)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You said earlier that your role would be fragmented for your succession; One of these will be the responsibility to maintain the culture. [son] Howard [Buffett] as non-executive chairman.
What is the plan for how to preserve Berkshire’s culture once Howard is no longer in this role, and when I’m your age, what should shareholders be looking out for to make sure the culture is properly maintained decades later?…
WARREN BUFFET: So far, the main factor in preserving the Berkshire culture is that you have a board of directors and successive board members. You have managers and you will have successor managers. And you have shareholders who have embraced the culture, who clearly recognize the special nature of the culture. When they sold their business to us, they wanted to participate in that culture.
This actually pushes out people who are not in tune with it, and there are very few of them. And it embraces those who enjoy and appreciate it. And I think to some extent we don’t have a lot of competition in that regard. So it becomes very identifiable and it works…
Charlie Munger: I think the culture will really surprise everyone – how well it rides – and how good it is. They’ll wonder why they made such a fuss about us in the first place. It will work very well.
WARREN BUFFET: We have a lot of good material already here in terms of businesses and people in companies.
Charlie Munger: That’s what I’m saying.
WARREN BUFFET: Yes.
Charlie Munger: There’s a lot of power there.
BERKSHire SHARE TIME
BRK.A stock price: $745,600.00
BRK.B share price: $494.53
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 15.81
Berkshire market cap: $1,068,856,999,340
Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $381.7 billion (up 10.9% from June 30)
Excluding railroad cash and treasury bills payable: $354.3 billion (up 4.3% from June 30)
There have been no Berkshire stock buybacks since May 2024.
(All figures are as of the date of publication unless otherwise stated)
BERKSHire’S LARGEST SHAREHOLDING HOLDINGS – December 19, 2025
Berkshire’s top listed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan by market capitalization based on their latest closing prices.
Holdings as of September 30, 2025, as reported. Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F application On November 14, 2025, except:
A complete list of holdings and current market values is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send me any questions or comments about the newsletter at: alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (We’re sorry, but we do not forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
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Additionally, reading Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders is highly recommended. There are people gathered on Berkshire’s website here.
— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
