Abel takes over for Buffett in less than two weeks. Wall Street has some advice for new Berkshire CEO
With Warren Buffett’s planned departure as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO less than two weeks away, some on Wall Street have advice for incoming CEO Greg Abel.
Glenview Trust CIO Bill Stone says the most important thing Abel can do is “don’t try to be Warren Buffett.” Buffett and Charlie Munger, he said on Yahoo Finance, were the “greatest duo” in investing of all time.
Wall Street’s advice for Greg Abel
Boyar Research President Jonathan Boyar told CNBC alum Josh Lipton the best thing Abel could do to win Wall Street’s trust is to “buy an extremely large amount of Berkshire stock personally and really put his money where his mouth is.”
According to the 2025 annual meeting proxy, Abel already owns what Boyar calls a “fair amount” of Berkshire shares that are currently valued at around $171 million, but he notes that “all of that was bought when, obviously, Buffett” ran the company.
What’s next for Berkshire Hathaway?
The Motley Fool’s David Jagielski writes Buffett’s long tenure gave the company “plenty of time to prepare for a successor” and Abel is “well prepared” to be CEO.
He predicts Abel’s approach won’t differ a lot from Buffett’s but there could still be significant changes in Berkshire’s portfolio.
Market analysts weigh in
Mel Casey at FBB Capital Partners tells Yahoo Finance the diversity of Berkshire’s subsidiaries gives it an “all-weather quality” so that “you could almost think of it as a lower-risk alternative to owning the broader market.”
He sees Berkshire as “pretty reasonably valued” in a “year of pretty high valuations for U.S. large cap stocks.”
BNSF opposes the UP-NSC merger
BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway’s railroad, is not impressed by the 7,000-page merger application Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern filed Friday morning with regulators, as they seek to create the country’s first trans-continental freight system.
It repeated its opposition to the $85 billion deal in a news release that quotes CEO Katie Farmer as saying the “transaction poses a significant threat to the U.S. economy and the American consumer” by leaving shippers with fewer options and, as a result, higher rates that will translate into higher prices for the goods being shipped.
Warren Buffett on Berkshire’s culture
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger explain why they’re confident Berkshire’s culture will last even after Buffett’s son Howard no longer serves as non-executive chairman.
By far, the main factor in keeping Berkshire’s culture is that you have a board and you’ll have successor board members. You have managers and you’ll have successor managers. And you have shareholders that clearly recognize the special nature of the culture, that have embraced the culture.
When they sold their businesses to us, they wanted to join that culture. It’s a — it thrusts out people that really aren’t in tune with it, and there are very few of them. And it embraces those who enjoy and appreciate it. And I think, to some extent, we don’t have a lot of competition on it. So it becomes very identifiable, and it works…
CHARLIE MUNGER: I really think the culture is going to surprise everybody — how well it lasts — and how well they do. They’re going to wonder why they ever made any fuss over us in the first place. It’s going to work very well.
WARREN BUFFETT: We’ve got so many good ingredients in place, just in terms of the businesses and people already here, you know, that — at the companies.
CHARLIE MUNGER: There’s just so much power in place.
Berkshire’s market capitalization and top holdings
Berkshire market capitalization: $1,068,856,999,340
Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $381.7 billion (Up 10.9% from June 30)
Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $354.3 billion (Up 4.3% from June 30)
(All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise indicated)
Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on November 14, 2025, except for:
The full list of holdings and current market values is available in the 13F filing.
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