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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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

The Chairman position is to protect company culture, not make operational decisions.

Oh it applies to him. He just doesn’t care.

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.

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.

> Howard Buffett, a farmer with no college degree

What absolute humble beginnings ;-)

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.

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".

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 he his story is ending. =3

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.

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

> You’d spend all your time managing the money and associated stresses.

That's what your personal executive team is for.

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

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.