According to The Wall Street Journal, in just the first 100 days since taking office, Greg Abel—the newly appointed CEO of Berkshire Hathaway—has already begun to show clear changes. For the market, Greg Abel is not only the successor chosen by Buffett; he is also the person who will determine Berkshire’s capital allocation, the governance of its subsidiaries, and its investment style over the next decade.
63-year-old Buffett successor, Berkshire CEO Greg Abel
Greg Abel is 63 this year, and he officially took over as Berkshire CEO in January. Although he has repeatedly emphasized that Berkshire’s most core culture, values, the foundation of its insurance business, its diversified corporate structure, and the model of a CEO-led stock investment portfolio will not change, The Wall Street Journal says that the real situation is this: change has already begun—and it is change with direction and rhythm.
Abel has elevated and promoted close partners who work alongside him, raised his salary to levels higher than in the Buffett era while promising to use most of his compensation to buy Berkshire shares, restarted Berkshire’s share repurchase program that had been nearly stalled since 2024, and further expanded Berkshire’s Japan exposure—so much so that it even bought a stake in a local insurance company.
Insiders: Abel is more involved in management than Buffett
The most notable part of this report is how it portrays the most fundamental difference between Greg Abel and Buffett—not the value-investing philosophy, but the management style. For a long time, Buffett’s reputation with outsiders has been that he gives executives substantial autonomy, intervenes very little, and even tolerates managers who underperform—keeping them in their roles—just to avoid getting involved in unpleasant personnel matters. Greg Abel is not that kind of person.
The report quotes people familiar with Berkshire’s internal operations as saying Abel is more “hands-on”—meaning he is more deeply involved in day-to-day business, more actively engages with details, and holds subsidiaries, holdings, and even senior executives to higher standards. If someone cannot meet his benchmarks, he will not tend to endure it the way Buffett might; if necessary, dismissals are also not out of the question.
This makes Greg Abel a more typical modern corporate operator, not merely an extension of a legendary investor. Judging from his background, this style isn’t surprising. Greg Abel was born in Canada’s prairie region and has the typical pragmatic, direct temperament associated with North American Midwest culture. In the past, he oversaw for a long time Berkshire’s non-insurance businesses, especially maintaining very close ties with Berkshire Hathaway Energy—essentially a manager honed along the way through large industrial and public utility systems.
He isn’t someone who only understands capital markets—he knows how to manage railroads, energy, utilities, industrial businesses, and a massive, diversified corporate group. That’s why, after he took over Berkshire, what outsiders saw wasn’t a philosophical continuation of anything, but a person familiar with operations, performance management, and organizational accountability—starting to truly reach into the heart of this giant enterprise.
Abel has shown a stronger edge that differs from Buffett
The report says that even during the transition period before Abel officially took over, internal employees could already sense the atmosphere shifting. Last December, at an employee lunch, someone even directly asked him whether he would move Berkshire’s headquarters out of Omaha. If that kind of question were raised in the Buffett era, it would be almost unthinkable. But it reflects not that a headquarters move would actually happen; rather, everyone knows that “a new era is coming.” Abel responded on the spot that there would be no move, but the question itself was enough to show that Berkshire insiders were anticipating change after the handover.
In terms of his actual working style, Greg Abel has also demonstrated a very high level of involvement. Although Berkshire’s headquarters is in Omaha, Nebraska, Abel currently still lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with no immediate plan to move to Omaha—at least he may continue that situation until his son finishes high school. That means he often travels between the two places multiple times a week, with a one-way drive taking two hours.
Even more importantly, a large amount of his time goes to flying on company planes managed by Berkshire’s NetJets, visiting subsidiary executives across the U.S. This highly mobile, frequent inspection approach is exactly the style of a strong operating manager.
Greg Abel redefines Berkshire’s core holdings
From an investment perspective, Greg Abel’s first important signal is that he has started to redefine the “core” and “non-core” parts of Berkshire’s investment portfolio. In the first shareholder letter he released on February 28, he explicitly named Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Moody’s as core holdings.
This stance is crucial because it’s not only reaffirming Berkshire’s preference for concentrated holdings; it is also telling the market that after entering the Greg Abel era, even if Berkshire’s stock investments remain concentrated, it does not mean that all major holdings will be treated equally in terms of status. The report even points out that Bank of America and Chevron are not considered core positions on the same level as the four companies mentioned above.
In the Greg Abel era, Berkshire’s investment decisions may be more “concentrated”
At the same time, Greg Abel has begun to organize the investment structure left behind from the transition period. The report says that the stock positions managed by Todd Combs have been sold off. Todd Combs was one of the two investment managers Buffett recruited, but he has recently moved on to work at JPMorgan. Even more intriguing is that the report says Abel is unlikely to hire additional new investment managers to help manage the entire portfolio.
What does that mean? It means that Berkshire’s future stock-investment power is likely to be even more concentrated in the hands of the CEO alone than during Buffett’s later years. For the market, this means not only higher decision efficiency, but also that Greg Abel’s personal judgment is likely to be more directly reflected in changes to Berkshire’s holdings.
However, if you ask what truly will define Greg Abel’s historical positioning, it probably isn’t whether he adjusts holdings, but how he will deploy Berkshire’s record amount of cash. According to the report, Berkshire currently holds $373.1 billion in cash. For any successor, this is both an opportunity and a pressure point.
Long-term shareholders may not care whether Abel will continue Buffett’s style; what they care about is whether, when the next deep downturn arrives, he is willing to act more aggressively with large-scale moves than Buffett did in his later years. Chris Bloomstran, an investor who holds Berkshire long-term, said directly that shareholders’ real expectation of Greg Abel is that he should have the nerve to put $300 billion into the market—and that he should be more aggressive than Buffett was in his later years.
This is also the key observation about Greg Abel. Because Berkshire isn’t an ordinary company—it is one of the very few capital-allocation machines in the world that simultaneously has insurance float, massive cash, complete industrial assets, and a high level of market trust. Buffett’s core capability in his era wasn’t just selecting stocks; it was making large, high-return decisions with extremely low-cost capital when markets were in panic. Whether Greg Abel can inherit that capability will determine whether he is only a “manager after Buffett,” or whether he can become a “capital allocator after Buffett.”
In addition, over the past year Greg Abel has also devoted a substantial amount of time to one of Berkshire’s most important foundations: the insurance business. The report says he prioritized learning Berkshire’s large insurance system and has worked closely with Ajit Jain, who has long led the insurance business. Ajit Jain is expected to continue leading the insurance division, but Berkshire has also arranged succession planning for him internally. This shows that Greg Abel isn’t only focused on the energy and industrial areas he knows well; he is consciously filling in his grasp of Berkshire’s insurance core engine.
Greg Abel’s test: it starts when the next downturn begins
From a personal image standpoint, Greg Abel has, to a certain extent, continued the Buffett-style Midwestern likability. The report says he loves hockey and even still coaches his son’s team; during the Olympics, he also deliberately supported Canada’s men’s team and the U.S. women’s team at the same time, so he wouldn’t appear to pick sides. These details make him look like a pragmatic, approachable person with a strong sense of everyday life—fully consistent with Berkshire’s plainspoken culture it has shaped for years.
But don’t let that mild surface fool you. What The Wall Street Journal is really trying to portray is a successor who doesn’t run from conflict. The report quotes multiple people familiar with Greg Abel saying he believes in self-governance and decentralization, and he respects Berkshire’s long-standing decentralized model—but that does not mean he will allow laggards to keep dragging the organization down.
In simple terms, Abel does not plan to copy Buffett and Munger’s past tolerance for underperforming subsidiaries. Going forward, if certain businesses fail to meet benchmarks over the long term, being called out, being put in order, and even being sold will no longer be impossible options.
This is especially worth noting for the market, because historically Berkshire has rarely sold fully owned controlling subsidiaries. In the past, the only truly representative cases were the sale of the newspaper business in 2020, and the earlier closure of the textile business in 1985. That means that in Buffett’s era, the companies Berkshire bought were mostly ones meant to be held permanently. But entering the Greg Abel era, this unwritten rule may not still hold completely.
If performance can’t meet the standards of the new boss, Berkshire’s way of handling subsidiaries in the future may be more flexible—and more disciplined—than the approach the market has been familiar with. Greg Abel is not trying to overturn Buffett. He wants to transform Berkshire from a “company built on exceptions led by a genius founder” into a modern holding group that, while preserving the spirit of inheritance, strengthens execution power and accountability mechanisms.
He has kept Berkshire’s most important genes: culture, insurance, concentrated investing, long-term holding, and capital discipline; but he is also adding his own signature: going more deeply into operations, placing more emphasis on performance, being more willing to handle underperformers, and being more likely to make bold capital allocation moves at major moments.
For investors, Greg Abel’s true test hasn’t arrived yet. It may only become clear when the next recession comes, the next liquidity crisis appears, or the next big M&A opportunity emerges—at which point the market will be able to see whether this new boss has the ability to rewrite history with decisions like Buffett did amid chaos. But at least looking at these 100 days, Berkshire’s new era has already begun—and this successor does not seem to be content with merely maintaining the status quo.
This article, Greg Abel takes over Berkshire for 100 days: the successor to Buffett is reshaping the way an investment empire is managed, first appeared on Lianxin News ABMedia.
