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Berkshire Hathaway filing provides glimpse of share buyback resumption

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Berkshire Hathaway applied definitive proxy statement We will meet with the SEC this afternoon ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha on May 2.

It shows Berkshire bought back the equivalent of 309 Class A shares worth about $226 million on March 4, the day it resumed buybacks for the first time since May 2024. registration date of the annual meeting as shown in the proxy statement.

The company announced its decision to restart In a March 5 SEC filing “in the interest of transparency in our leadership transition” but did not provide details. New CEO Greg Abel told CNBC last week There will be no future buyback announcements other than information contained in their regular quarterly financial reports.

Warren Buffett speaks at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting on May 3, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska.

CNBC

Warren Buffett’s total annual salary last year fell from $405,111 in 2024 to $389,488, according to the proxy document. This is a decrease of close to 4%. This is entirely due to a reduction in the amount Berkshire pays for Buffett’s personal and home security services. His salary was $100,000 every year, as it had been for decades.

New CEO Greg Abel’s salary last year rose to $22 million, up from $21 million the year before. Last week, Abel told CNBC that he used his entire after-tax salary to personally buy $15.3 million in Berkshire. Class A shares. He plans to continue buying Berkshire shares with his salary every year “as long as I’m CEO.”

Abel’s salary this year is $25 million.

Berkshire’s insurance chief Ajit Jain’s 2025 salary also increased to $22 million, from $21 million in 2024.

Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. held on May 3, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. attended the annual shareholders meeting.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Shareholders are being asked to give advisory approval to the compensation paid to Berkshire’s top executives. The board is also asking shareholders to approve plans for another advisory vote on compensation in three years.

The board recommends voting “no” on the shareholders’ proposal Whistle Stop Capital It calls for a report on Berkshire’s “oversight framework for human capital management across its workforce and operating subsidiaries” to address concerns that “the company’s decentralized structure leaves it exposed to inconsistent approaches to human capital management.”

The Board argues that “issues related to workforce and human capital management are appropriately placed within the oversight and discretion of businesses where decisions regarding policies and practices may vary depending on geography and industry-specific concerns, risks and opportunities.”

Buffett dropped to 9th place on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest billionaires

Warren Buffett is the ninth richest person in the world Forbes, Which announced its annual rankings this week.

puts his net worth is $149 billion down as of March 10 Last year it ranked sixth with 154 billion dollars.

This year, Buffett is on the trail Elon Musk ($839 billion), Larry Page ($257 billion), Sergey Brin ($237 billion), Jeff Bezos ($224 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($222 billion), Larry Ellison ($190 billion), Bernard Arnault and his family ($171 billion)And Jensen Huang ($154 billion).

Bloomberg’s arrangement Buffett ranks 11th with $146 billion.

Buffett has donated Berkshire shares, now worth about $203 billion, since 2006.

If he kept them, his net worth would be around $352 billion, making him the second richest person in the world after Elon Musk.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVE

‘What bothers me is that companies pay too much for mediocrity’ (1998)

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Explain the justification and rationalization for the exorbitant salaries, bonuses, perks, executive pay, and other benefits paid by most public companies. (Applause)

WARREN BUFFET: I can say this. In my opinion, the most exorbitant figures are not necessarily the largest figures. What really bothers me is that companies pay a lot of money for mediocrity, and it happens all too often.

But we don’t have any arguments in our subsidiaries about paying a lot of money for outstanding performance, for example. So, we get back 10 to 20 or 1 to 50.

Similarly, in publicly traded companies, we think of the executives (among our executives) as the ones who take companies to market caps of many, many, many billions more than almost anyone else can achieve…

I am disturbed by unreasonable wage systems. It particularly bothers me that average managers receive huge sums of money.

I get annoyed when they design systems that are too costly for the company, or they design for them – maybe partly to make themselves look good because they want huge options themselves, so they wonder whether to offer broad options across the company – they design an unreasonable system across the company because they want a system that is unreasonable for them personally.

But large sums of money do not bother me. I’m not saying whether anyone wants to buy them or not. But I don’t mind paying a lot for performance.

This is done in athletics; It is done in entertainment. But in the business world, the 200 hitters and the people who can’t draw a crowd as an entertainer have figured it out in such a way that – I mean, the system has evolved in such a way that – most of them are getting huge amounts of money. And I think that’s obscene. But I can say that there is not much you can do.

The system feeds itself. And companies look at proxy statements of other companies, every CEO does that. And they say, “If Joe Smith is worth X, I have to be worth more.” And they tell managers, “You certainly wouldn’t hire anyone below average, so how can you pay me below average?” And consultants come and increase the rewards.

And that’s not something that’s going to go away. It’s like we were talking about campaign finance reform before. The people who hold the key are the beneficiaries of the system. And it is very difficult to change the system when the man with his hand on the button benefits from the system to a great and perhaps disproportionate extent.