Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, closing a 56-year run at the top of the conglomerate’s board. The 96-year-old moves into the role of chairman emeritus and will stay on as a director, while his son Howard G. Buffett, a board member for 33 years, takes over as non-executive chairman.

Succession Plan Unfolds

The handover completes a succession that has been unfolding in stages. Buffett gave up the CEO title at the end of 2025 to Greg Abel, whose appointment had been announced back in May 2025, and Abel has run the operating business since January 1, 2026. Susan Decker continues as lead independent director.

A Long Transition

None of this arrived out of the blue. Buffett’s tenure at Berkshire stretches back to 1965, and he formally assumed the chairman’s seat in 1970. As CEO, he delivered an annual growth rate of 19.9 percent, well ahead of the S&P 500’s 10.4 percent over the same stretch.

Today’s Berkshire is a roughly $1.1 trillion conglomerate spanning insurance, rail freight, energy and industrials, with an equity portfolio worth close to $300 billion. Holdings include Apple, Alphabet, Coca-Cola, American Express and Bank of America. Regulatory filings for the second quarter of 2026 show that Apple, American Express and Coca-Cola alone accounted for about half the reported portfolio value.

The elder Buffett will remain available to the board as an ordinary member, offering his judgment and perspective. Howard Buffett, 71, is not expected to run the business, that stays with Abel. The new chairman farms 1,500 acres in Illinois, served as sheriff of Macon County between 2017 and 2018, has led the Howard G. Buffett Foundation since 1999 and has spent roughly a decade as a UN goodwill ambassador focused on hunger relief. By Warren Buffett’s own account, his son’s chief task is preserving the company’s culture.

Market Reaction

Markets take the news in stride. Trading suggested little anxiety about the reshuffle. The premium investors once paid for Buffett’s presence had largely evaporated well before the change, according to Reuters, and the stock slipped just 0.1 percent on Friday to EUR 665,000.00. At that level, the shares sit 2.9 percent below their 52-week high of EUR 686,000, reached in August, a gap that points to caution rather than alarm among investors, without derailing the broader upward trend of recent months.

Operationally, the company remains on solid footing. The insurance unit’s float has grown to about $177.5 billion. Abel has flagged substantial potential in building out data centers for artificial intelligence, even as Berkshire sticks with its familiar playbook of anchoring the portfolio in large, established positions.

For shareholders, September 18 marks less a break in the business than a symbolic full stop: the power Warren Buffett concentrated in one person over decades is now formally spread across three sets of shoulders — Abel for operations, Howard Buffett for culture, and the elder Buffett in the background as chairman emeritus.