Berkshire Hathaway has new leadership for the first time in six decades. Greg Abel is running the company as chief executive and Howard Buffett has taken the chairman's seat, after Warren Buffett, 96, stepped back from the top jobs on Friday, completing the Berkshire leadership transition in a handover the company had been planning for years.

Buffett will stay on Berkshire's board but will no longer hold a management role at the company he has run since 1965, according to the Associated Press report on the announcement. He had served as chairman since 1970 and as chief executive until the end of last year, when Greg Abel took over as CEO.

The letter to shareholders

Buffett explained the decision in a letter to shareholders released with the announcement. He noted that he had served Berkshire since 1965 and said that more than sixty years in, he still considered his role the best job in the world. He wrote that Abel's performance as CEO since January had helped settle the timing, saying his expectations for Abel had been sky high from the start and had been exceeded.

The letter put the handoff in plain terms: Abel runs the company, while Howard will guard its culture and values. Buffett compared his son's role to an insurance policy that shareholders own and hope to leave untouched. He also acknowledged his age directly, writing that Father Time always wins, but that time had been generous with him and left him more confident than ever about what lies ahead for Berkshire.

Who takes over

Howard Buffett, 71, is the new chairman. He has served on Berkshire's board since 1993, which his father noted was a longer apprenticeship than the one he himself served before taking the reins at age 34. Howard will serve as a non-executive chairman, focused on preserving the company's culture and values rather than day-to-day management.

Outside Berkshire, Howard Buffett is a farmer and a former sheriff who runs a foundation working on food security and conflict mitigation. He has also held directorships at major companies including Coca-Cola. Investors who know him describe the appointment as a continuity play: his job is to be a watchdog for the decentralized, shareholder-first culture his father built.

Greg Abel, 64, has been CEO since January. He joined Berkshire in 2000 through its purchase of MidAmerican Energy, later renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which he built into one of the largest power providers in the central and western United States. He was named vice chairman in 2018 to oversee Berkshire's non-insurance businesses, from the BNSF railroad to Fruit of the Loom and See's Candies. Since taking the top job, he has put his own stamp on the company with large investments, including a major stake in Google parent Alphabet and the acquisition of home builder Taylor Morrison.

The end of an era, by the numbers

Reaction to the Berkshire chairman handover was swift. Reuters reported that investors and analysts do not expect big changes at the conglomerate, with Howard Buffett's longtime presence seen as an anchor for the culture his father built over six decades.

What Buffett built is difficult to overstate. He took control of Berkshire in 1965, when it was a struggling New England textile maker, and turned it into a conglomerate with a market value approaching $1 trillion, a scale that puts it in a different league from the crypto rallies that dominate younger investors' feeds. Its holdings span the BNSF railroad, car insurer Geico, energy and industrial companies, retailers, and a stock portfolio that includes American Express, Apple and Coca-Cola.

During his tenure as CEO, Berkshire compounded at 19.9% a year, nearly double the S&P 500's 10.4% return over the same stretch, according to the company. Buffett has also given away roughly $66 billion worth of Berkshire stock since 2006, and his personal fortune was valued at more than $140 billion in July, according to Forbes.

Abel said in a statement that Buffett's impact on Berkshire and its owners was without parallel in the history of American business, and that the culture and values Buffett built would remain at the company's heart with Howard as their guardian.

What investors are watching

The question now is whether Berkshire can keep its identity without its founder in the chairman's seat. Analysts quoted by Reuters said the test will be whether Abel and Howard can honor Buffett's legacy while adapting to a market that looks very different from the one Buffett mastered. One longtime investor described Howard's role as keeping bureaucracy minimal, staying focused on long-term goals, and putting shareholders first.

For younger investors, the transition lands differently. Many first encountered Buffett through memes about his frugality, his annual shareholder meetings in Omaha, and the cult of value investing he inspired. Berkshire under Abel is already showing a slightly different appetite, making some of its biggest deals in recent years. The company says Susan Decker, a board member since 2007, will continue as lead independent director, adding another familiar face to the new lineup.

Fifty-six years after Buffett became chairman, the company he built is handing the gavel to the next generation. The culture was the real product all along, and the Berkshire leadership transition will show whether it can hold without its founder in the chair.