Warren Buffett’s successor Greg Abel saw Berkshire’s culture preserve

Of Koh Gui Qing and Jonathan Stempel

Omaha, Nebraska (Reuters) -when Greg Abel succeeds in Warren Buffett at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of this year, it is expected that the culture is preserved in Behemoth, even if it does not coincide with the star power of his legendary head.

Investors and analysts are waiting for Abel, 62, to have a Berkshire Vice President, to maintain the $ 1.18 million conglomerate history of investing in long -haul companies and wasted dividend payments to shareholders.

Berkshire, owner of railways, insurance companies and ice cream maker, decades for decades for decades when Buffett, 94, has been running the company since 1965, is no longer there.

However, he was surprised when Buffett announced on Saturday that Abel would replace him as CEO. The Oracle of Omaha had not indicated a clear intention on when it had to be left out.

Buffett has been alluding to his elderly age and before announcing his planned departure at the annual meeting of Berkshire shareholders in Omaha, said that Abel was more at the height of the workplace.

“He is working better with Greg Abel than with me, because I don’t want to work as hard as he works,” said Buffett.

One of the questions asked Abel what his subsidiary management approach would be. “More active,” he replied.

Abel also praised Buffett, saying “Warren has obviously been a remarkable teacher and I have benefited for years.”

A man of detail

Gregory Edward Abel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, on June 1, 1962 to a working class family.

Working strange jobs, cleaned the discarded bottles and filled the extinguishers, according to the Horatio Algiers Association of Distinguished Americans, a non -profit education that honored Abel in 2018.

“It was a real working class family where people sometimes had a job and sometimes they did not,” Abel said about their childhood in a video published on the Horatio Algiers website. “You realized that we were all working hard to try to move our family forward.”

Abel graduated in 1984 from Alberta University and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Calenergy Energy Firm.

He joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy, then known as Mid -American Energy, in 1992, who later took over Berkshire and became the head of Mid -American in 2008.

Abel now oversees Berkshire’s non -insurance operations such as Bnsf, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and dozens of chemical, industrial and retail operations.

Last year he has also assumed some of the capital allocation responsibilities that had been Buffett.

Buffett said that last year I would also like to have decisions on the decisions on the Berkshire public stock portfolio, a job that he thought before would be left to others.

Many executives who work with Abel call him a perceptual question that examines financial metrics closely and wants to closely understand business and how they execute.

Abel’s questions “secure -you think through directives and plans as a company,” said Chris Kelly, CEO of Homeservices of America, the largest residential real estate intermediation in the United States. “You look smarter to have a conversation with him.”

(Koh Gui Qing to Omaha’s report; Additional Reports of Jonathan Stempel and Carolina Mandl; Edition of Megan Davies and Andrea Ricci)