On May 2, the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting returned to Omaha, Nebraska. This marked the first meeting without Warren Buffett at center stage, though the culture and legacy he built alongside Charlie Munger remained in clear view. Buffett limited himself to a short speech to begin the meeting and a 20-minute interview with Becky Quick.
Greg Abel, leading his first annual meeting, stuck to a similar structure used by Buffett in previous years, including an overview of the business followed by two Q&A sessions. Abel, though, took his own approach to communicating and operating the meeting. He spent almost a full hour describing the individual businesses and brought up a set of new faces, in addition to Ajit Jain, Vice Chair of Insurance Operations, during the Q&A sessions. These included:
- Katherine ‘Katie’ Farmer: CEO of BNSF Railway since 2021; Farmer is the first female CEO of a Class I railroad and has been with the firm for over 30 years.
- Adam Johnson: A 30-year veteran at NetJets and CEO for the last ten years. Adam was recently appointed as President of the Consumer Products, Service and Retailing businesses of Berkshire Hathaway supporting the 32 companies in these segments of the business.
Katie and Adam offered timely insights into their underlying businesses, answered tough questions on operating metrics that have missed the mark in recent years, and provided clear guidance on how they will improve operations going forward. We believe Berkshire’s culture is built to last forever, but that success is neither given nor guaranteed. A strong management team around Greg Abel and Ajit Jain will be key to ensuring the company can continue to generate above-average returns for investors.
The departure of Todd Combs, the firm’s Investment Manager since 2011 and CEO of GEICO since 2019, raised questions about the strength of this team. Our sense from this meeting is that the support staff around Greg and Ajit are highly skilled and focused on the right objectives for the business going forward. In the days following the meeting, it was also announced that Charlie Shamieh, Chairman at Gen Re, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, would serve as Ajit Jain’s successor should he ever choose to step away from managing Berkshire’s insurance business. Shamieh has been with Gen Re since 2018.
The continuity of Berkshire’s culture has been key to the company’s success and should continue under Greg Abel. In our full report covering the annual meeting, we discuss the results of Berkshire Hathaway’s operations in detail and consider what might be next for the company.
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