There is one executive to study at Berkshire right now (Greg Abel)

Greg Abel is the CEO, and heir, of Berkshire Hathaway.

He took over on January 1st 2026.

Obviously Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett are synonymous. So, the operant question is... can Abel be Buffett 2.0?

Buffett certainly thinks so. In 2023, Mr. Buffett told CNBC, Mr. Abel “does all the work and I take all the bows.” he added, “He’s a big improvement on me, but don’t tell anybody.”

Though Mr. Buffett won renown as one of the most successful stock pickers of all time, his successor’s strengths lie more in running businesses. That is in part a reflection of what Berkshire is today: an empire of often-disconnected businesses that together employ more than 392,000 workers.

Mr. Abel is not expected to choose the companies that go into Berkshire’s investment portfolio, the company already has two executives, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who were hired by Mr. Buffett to help with that. But he will oversee the kinds of big deals that the conglomerate is perhaps uniquely able to strike, given the $347.7+ billion in cash that it is sitting on. (Buffett has called that his “elephant gun.”).

Greg Abel's Story

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 honoured Abel in 2018.

“It was a real working-class family where sometimes people had jobs and sometimes they didn’t,” Abel said of his childhood in a video posted on the Horatio Alger website. “You realised 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.

Is Greg Abel in the Epstein files?

Yup. Unfortunately this is the world we live in. I figured I'd take a quick look just to make sure.

There are two returns for searching "Greg Abel". Not sure if this is THIS Greg Abel, or another one. Overall, I don't think this is a concern for Greg Abel (obviously it's a concern for the rest of our business and elected leaders). There's just a contact email listed as "Greg Abel".

Greg's Reputation at Berkshire

He joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy, then known as MidAmerican Energy, in 1992, which Berkshire took over in 1999 and became MidAmerican's chief in 2008.

He now oversees Berkshire's non-insurance operations such as BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and dozens of chemical, industrial and retail operations.

Some executives who work with Abel say he scrutinises financial metrics such as inventory levels, cash flows, capital expenditure and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

"Greg looks at our inventory levels more than Warren did. He will sometimes circle it and be like 'Oh, that looks high,'" Adrienne Perry, chief revenue officer at Borsheims, a Berkshire-owned jeweller, said last week at a talk in Omaha.

Dan Sheridan, chief executive of Brooks Running, a maker of running shoes that is owned by Berkshire, said Abel advises his executives broadly, but keeps an eye on the bottom line.

"If there are warts on your balance sheet, he's going to find them," Sheridan said in an interview.

Even Buffett once quipped that Abel is a tougher boss.

"We haven't had a history of being very tough on people that coasted and we've had some that would do that," Buffett said. "Greg will do something about it and Charlie and I wouldn't have."

“I would leave the capital allocation to Greg," Buffett said at the 2024 AGM. "He understands businesses extremely well, and if you understand businesses you understand common stocks.” (REALLY GREAT FLANK PLUG THERE!)

Greg's Business Philosophy

I'll try to take a look at his philosophy for business, and hopefully we can use that as a way to see what he'll do now that he's in the driver seat.

The most important repeated idea tied to Abel is: produce lots of cash and allocate it sensibly.

What that implies in Berkshire terms:

Prefer buying/holding high-quality entire businesses when priced rationally
When bargains are scarce, be willing to wait with cash (patience as a feature, not a bug)
Use repurchases opportunistically (and under Abel, investors are watching closely if that changes, or if dividends ever appear)

He's also considered much more hands on than Buffett. He's an "Operator-first".

Since Abel is more “operationally engaged” than Buffett, who is famously hands-off with subsidiaries. That does not mean Abel will micromanage, but it suggests:

More structured performance conversations with CEOs
More attention to operating metrics and risk controls
More willingness to intervene when risk is existential (example: wildfire operational policy)

How did BHE perform under Abel's leadership?

Very large, long-duration capital projects
Comfort with regulated returns and stakeholder complexity
M&A that builds scale (utilities, pipelines, transmission)
A bias toward reinvestment (compounding inside the business)

Overall Sentiment: Slightly Bullish. I wish I knew more about him, but information is limited.