Every morning, Astrid Menks puts the exact change for a McDonald's breakfast in the cup holder of her husband's car. The order never costs more than $3.17 — what he gets depends on how the market is doing. Then Warren Buffett, 95, drives himself to the 9th floor of Blackstone Plaza in Omaha, the same office he's worked from for decades. He still goes every day. He just doesn't run the company anymore.
Who's Who?
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Warren Buffett — Still drives to the office at 95. His McDonald's order depends on the market. -
Greg Abel — Grew up collecting soda bottles for nickels in Edmonton. Now runs a trillion-dollar company. -
AMAstrid Menks — Puts his exact McDonald's change in the car every morning — never more than $3.17.
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Howard Buffett — Thirty years on the board and half a billion dollars in Ukraine aid. -
S'Susan 'Susie' Buffett — Seventy percent of her grants stay within driving distance of her father's office.
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Peter Buffett — Must unanimously agree with his siblings on how to give away $150 billion. -
AJAjit Jain — Has run Berkshire's insurance operations since 1986 — the institutional memory.
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AAAndrea Abel — Raised a family in Iowa while her husband quietly climbed to the top of Berkshire.
Buffett announced his retirement at Berkshire's annual shareholders meeting on May 3, 2025, and it stunned the room — including the man he was handing the company to. He had always said he had no plans to step down. 'I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive of the company at year end,' he told shareholders. Board members learned it in real time. Greg Abel learned it in real time. On December 31, 2025, Buffett officially stepped down. On January 1, 2026, Abel took over. It was the first CEO change at Berkshire Hathaway since Buffett took control of a failing New England textile mill in 1965.
The numbers are almost absurd. Under Buffett, Berkshire compounded at 19.9% annually from 1965 to 2024, nearly doubling the S&P 500's 10.4%. A textile company became a trillion-dollar conglomerate. Charlie Munger, the partner Buffett called the architect of modern Berkshire, died on November 28, 2023, at 99. His absence loomed over the whole transition. The man who built the thing and the man who designed it are both gone from the stage now.
The man who replaced them grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, collecting empty soda bottles for five cents apiece. Greg Abel, 63, trained as a chartered accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, joined Berkshire in 2000 when it acquired a controlling stake in MidAmerican Energy where he was president, and became vice chairman in 2018. His wife Andrea and their son live in Des Moines, Iowa, where Abel coached youth hockey teams between running one of the largest energy operations in North America. Most Berkshire shareholders had never heard his name until the handoff. On his first day, Class A shares fell 1.4%.
Three months in, Abel is making his own moves. He resumed Berkshire share buybacks — the first since May 2024 — with Buffett's personal approval. He took a new stake in Tokio Marine. He committed to using all of his after-tax salary to buy Berkshire stock. And in February 2026, he wrote his first shareholders letter, 18 pages long. 'Warren is obviously a very hard act to follow,' he wrote. Then he laid out what he intends to protect: 'Our culture is our most treasured asset, a call to maintain what defines Berkshire, and a challenge to ensure our culture continues.' The transition also took a hit in December 2025 when Todd Combs, one of Berkshire's two investment lieutenants, left for JPMorgan — leaving Ted Weschler as the sole remaining portfolio manager and Abel himself overseeing 94% of Berkshire's equity holdings.
Ajit Jain, 74, is one of the few senior leaders bridging both eras. He's run Berkshire's insurance operations since 1986 and pulled $22 million in compensation in 2025. If Abel is the new CEO, Jain is the institutional memory — the person who remembers how Buffett actually made decisions, not just what he said at shareholder meetings.
Then there are the children. Howard Buffett has served on Berkshire's board for over 30 years and is designated to become non-executive chairman after his father's death — a guardian of culture, not operations. His foundation has directed more than $500 million in aid to war-stricken Ukraine. Susie Buffett, Warren's eldest daughter, chairs the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, with more than 70% of her Sherwood Foundation grants going to Omaha-area nonprofits focused on education and poverty. Peter Buffett, the youngest, is an Emmy-winning composer who co-chairs the NoVo Foundation with his wife Jennifer, focusing on empowering women and girls. All three must unanimously agree on how to disburse their father's $150 billion-plus fortune, and it all has to be given away within ten years of his death.
Buffett remains chairman. He plans to attend the May 2026 shareholders meeting, though he'll sit with the board rather than take questions from the stage. Berkshire's market cap exceeds a trillion dollars. The biggest open question isn't whether Abel can keep the trains running — he's an operations executive, and Berkshire's decentralized structure runs itself. The question is whether a chartered accountant from Edmonton can deploy the biggest cash pile in corporate America the way the greatest capital allocator in history did. Abel knows the answer everyone expects. He wrote it himself: Warren is obviously a very hard act to follow.