By Koh Gui Qing and Jonathan Stempel
OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) -When Greg Abel succeeds Warren Buffett at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of this year, he is expected to preserve the culture at the behemoth even if he does not match the star power of his legendary boss.
Abel, 62, now a Berkshire vice chairman, is expected by investors and analysts to uphold the $1.18 trillion conglomerate’s track record of investing in companies for the long haul and eschewing dividend payments to shareholders.
Berkshire, which owns railroads, insurance companies and an ice-cream maker, has been planning for decades for the eventuality when Buffett, 94, who has run the company since 1965, is no longer there.
Still, it came as a surprise when Buffett announced on Saturday that Abel should replace him as chief executive. The Oracle of Omaha had not before signaled a clear intention on when to step aside.
Buffett has long alluded to his advanced age, and before announcing his planned departure at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha signaled Abel was more up to the job than he was.
“It’s working way better with Greg Abel than with me, because I don’t want to work as hard as he works,” Buffett said.
One questioner asked Abel what his management approach to subsidiaries would be. “More active,” he responded.
Abel also praised Buffett, saying “Warren has obviously been a remarkable teacher, and I have benefited from that for years.”
A DETAILS MAN
Gregory Edward Abel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, on June 1, 1962, to a working-class family.
Working odd jobs, he cleaned discarded bottles and filled fire extinguishers, according to the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, an education non-profit that honored Abel in 2018.
“It was a real working-class family where sometimes people had jobs and sometimes they didn’t,” Abel said about his childhood in a video posted on the Horatio Alger website. “You realized we were all working hard to try to advance our family.”
Abel graduated in 1984 from the University of Alberta and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and energy firm CalEnergy.
He joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy, then known as MidAmerican Energy, in 1992, which Berkshire later took over, and became MidAmerican’s chief in 2008.
Abel now oversees Berkshire’s non-insurance operations such as BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and dozens of chemical, industrial and retail operations.
He has in the last year also taken over some of the capital allocation responsibilities that had been Buffett’s.
Buffett said last year he would also want Abel to have final say on decisions regarding Berkshire’s portfolio of public stocks, a job previously thought would be left to others.
Many executives who work with Abel call him a perceptive questioner who closely scrutinizes financial metrics and wants to closely understand the businesses and how they’re run.
Abel’s questions “ensure you are thinking through directives and plans as a company,” said Chris Kelly, chief executive of HomeServices of America, the largest U.S. residential real estate brokerage. “You come away smarter from having a conversation with him.”
(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing in Omaha; additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Carolina Mandl; Editing by Megan Davies and Andrea Ricci)
