Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway’s board, ending a 56-year run in the role. The company announced Friday that Buffett, 96, will become chairman emeritus and remain a Berkshire director, while his son, Howard G. Buffett, has been elected chairman effective immediately.
The change closes out a leadership transition that began in January, when Greg Abel took over from Warren Buffett as chief executive.
The corporation issued its statement confirming Howard Buffett’s appointment on Friday, alongside Warren Buffett’s letter to shareholders, and recorded the change taking effect the same day
With the move, Berkshire’s top leadership is now split among three people.
Warren Buffett holds the honorary title of chairman emeritus and keeps his board seat, but the chairman’s authority now belongs to Howard Buffett, who leads the board itself.
Day-to-day control of the company, including its investment and capital allocation decisions, remains with Abel as chief executive. Susan Decker continues as lead independent director.
Howard Buffett is not new to Berkshire. He has sat on the company’s board since 1993, and for the past 27 years he has led the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a charity focused on hunger relief and conflict reduction, as its chairman and chief executive.
His record includes nearly a decade as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the World Food Programme and board seats at companies including Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra Foods, Coca-Cola and Lindsay Corporation, some of which he chaired.
From 2017 to 2018 Howard also served as sheriff of Macon County, Illinois.
“He has taken hold of the Chief Executive Officer job in every respect. He has been making the decisions that matter for some time now, and I have not had to think twice about any of them. So the timing is right to complete the transition. I will become Chairman Emeritus and remain a Director. My son, Howard, will succeed me as Chairman,” Warren Buffett wrote in his letter to shareholders.
“Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values – both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against,” he added.
Howard Buffett’s new post carries no executive authority over Berkshire’s operations. That responsibility sits with Abel, who became president and CEO on January 1 after the board voted unanimously in May 2025 to install him in the job.
Abel had spent a decade running Berkshire Hathaway Energy before becoming Berkshire’s vice chairman for non-insurance operations in 2018, a post he held for seven years. He has chaired the energy subsidiary since 2011.
the firm, in a filing, described the chairman and CEO roles as held by two different people.
Berkshire’s board formalized the leadership split well before the change last year September after a vote to rewrite the company’s bylaws, so the chairman and CEO would no longer be held by one person.
The vote cleared the way for the CEO change while Warren Buffett kept the chairmanship for several more months.
At the company’s annual meeting, Warren Buffett told shareholders he would recommend Abel for the CEO job, and the board approved the appointment the next day, with an effective date of January 1, 2026. He stayed on as chairman through that first stage of the handover.
The idea of a Buffett family member eventually chairing the board is not new. For more than 15 years, Berkshire has told shareholders, in its proxy statements, that the board discusses succession at every meeting.
Friday’s announcement completes the second stage, moving the chairmanship to Howard Buffett while Warren Buffett himself steps back to an emeritus role.
Those filings have also said no family member would ever run the company’s operations. Warren Buffett, though, has long said he believed it would be sensible for a family member to become non-executive chairman once he was no longer active in a leadership role.
That language, largely unchanged since at least 2010, left the final decision to Berkshire’s board at the time the change was made.
Howard Buffett’s board tenure stands at 33 years, longer than the tenure Warren Buffett served before he became chairman and CEO in 1970.
