The Berkshire Beat: January 2, 2026
All of the latest Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway news!
With the business world in something of a post-Christmas lull, I have had two big thoughts on my mind this week…
(1) First and foremost, Warren Buffett officially retired as Berkshire Hathaway CEO. Greg Abel will obviously bring his own ideas to the job — and we have already started to see some changes from a structural standpoint — but I expect it to mostly remain business as usual at Berkshire under his leadership.
After all, Buffett will still be in the office each day, Ajit Jain still heads up insurance, and Abel has already been handling the day-to-day business with the subsidiaries for the past few years. He now inherits ultimate responsibility for all corners of the conglomerate’s vast operations, but it doesn’t feel like a seismic shift is in the offing.
And the same goes for this newsletter. I will have more to say about this next week, but we are now about to witness Buffett’s final act — whether Berkshire will thrive, survive, or dive without him leading the way.
Buffett and Munger never made any secret of their ambition that Berkshire would endure long after they were both gone. Well, we are about to find out.
(In fact, for me, the story of how Berkshire adapts with Buffett stepping into the background is every bit as compelling as any other chapter in the company’s history.)
(2) As the calendar flips to a new year, many of us set resolutions to better our lives — losing weight, hitting the gym more often, eating healthier, and the like. And, if you are anything like me, those goals tend to fizzle out by February (at the latest).
I wonder if looking at health and longevity through an investor’s lens might yield better results. Compounding, whether Einstein actually said it or not, is the eighth wonder of the world. Start early, stay consistent, and small contributions will snowball into something extraordinary in the end.
But compounding takes time — and what good is it if you are not around (or not healthy enough) to enjoy the results?
In Getting There: A Book of Mentors, Warren Buffett shared an example of the kind of speech he often delivered to high school and college students on this very subject:
Let’s say that I offer to buy you the car of your dreams. You can pick out any car that you want, and when you get out of class this afternoon, that car will be waiting for you at home. There’s just one catch… It’s the only car you’re ever going to get in your entire life.
Now, knowing that, how are you going to treat that car? You’re probably going to read the owner’s manual four times before you drive it; you’re going to keep it in the garage, protect it at all times, change the oil twice as often as necessary. If there’s the least little bit of rust, you’re going to get that fixed immediately so it doesn’t spread — because you know it has to last you as long as you live.
Here’s the thing: that’s exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You have only one mind and one body for the rest of your life. Isn’t it just as important to take care of your mind and body as it is to take care of that car?
I hope that everyone reading this has a very happy and healthy 2026!
Other than $30.4 million in quarterly dividends from Chubb, $2.2 million (including a special dividend) from Lamar Advertising, and ~$400,000 from Allegion, tributes and retrospectives for Warren Buffett upon his retirement dominated the Berkshire Hathaway news scene this week…
Adam Mead, author of The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway, astutely labeled Buffett’s retirement as “both the biggest event in Berkshire’s history and a non-event”. Mostly because the transition has been slowly unfolding since Buffett named Greg Abel vice chairman back in 2018. “This is an exciting time for Berkshire,” wrote Mead. “With over $300 billion of surplus cash and an energetic new CEO, shareholders couldn’t be in much better shape heading into 2026.”
Thomas Russo of Gardner, Russo, & Quinn told CNBC that he doesn’t expect a whole lot to change. “I think the goal will be to continue as if nothing had happened,” said Russo. “I think Warren will remain active. Ideally, he will have a relationship with Greg much like Charlie had with Warren.”
The Rational Walk identified three particular challenges that Abel now faces: preserving Berkshire’s unique culture, improving the performance of laggard subsidiaries, and the massive task of capital allocation. “Mr. Abel’s background is as a businessman, not as an investor,” he wrote, “yet he now takes the reins of a company with over $354 billion of cash on the balance sheet generating tens of billions of dollars of additional free cash flow annually.”
Not to mention that $283 billion stock portfolio. “The departure of Todd Combs leaves Mr. Abel with just one investment manager, Ted Weschler, although Mr. Buffett will still be serving as Chairman and presumably will be available to assist with investing duties, at least for the foreseeable future.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that Buffett stayed true to his principles in his final year atop Berkshire. The conglomerate sold more stock than it purchased and made just one small (Bell Laboratories) and one medium-ish (OxyChem) acquisition. While Buffett surely craved making one final market-moving splash, he refused to force the issue and instead passed the baton to Greg Abel with Berkshire in fine fettle.
Chris Bloomstran hailed Berkshire’s 6.1 million percent gain during Buffett’s six decades of stewardship and pointed out one other incredible fact: Berkshire’s shares could decline by 99.2% and would still have outperformed the S&P 500 over that time. “However,” wrote Bloomstran, “it is not the returns but the way Warren did it that matters most; with integrity and morality — and with humility and humor. He didn’t have to teach, but he did.”
CNN bid Buffett farewell with a collection of lessons that other business leaders learned from him over the years. My favorite: “What I’ve always admired about Warren Buffett — and Charlie Munger for that matter — is their use of plain English and plain language to explain difficult concepts,” said Kayak CEO Steve Hafner. “It takes a lot of skill to take a complex issue and just split it to the bare minimum.”
Buffett biographer Roger Lowenstein praised the man’s character in an article that also appeared in the Boston Globe. “Wall Street is full of intelligent — and ambitious — men and women,” he wrote, “but few have displayed Buffett’s unswerving integrity and dedication to principle. As the years go by, it is plain that Buffett’s intelligence is matched by an ever rarer trait — his wisdom.”