Warren Buffett says Greg Abel will make Berkshire Hathaway investing decisions when he's gone

All right. The next question comes from Slavin Vukelbrat. As CEO, will Mr. Abel be in charge of the portfolio of common stocks that Mister Buffett has been managing, or will this function be exercised by Mr. Combs and Mr. Weschler as investing could be defined as the discipline of relative selection. Can major capital allocation decisions, such as large acquisitions, be separated from the common stock selection process? Yeah, I would say that decision actually will be made when I’m not around and I may try and come back and haunt them if they do it differently then. But I’m not sure the Ouija board or they will get that job done. So that job I’ll I’ll never know the answer on whether I get covered, but I feel very comfortable about the fact that it will be made by a board that they’ve got loads of brainpower. They’ve got a dedication to A to an unusual institution and they will figure things out. But I would, I would say that if I were on that board and were making the decision, I would probably knowing Greg, I would I would just leave. I would leave the capital allocation to Greg and he understands businesses extremely well. And if you understand businesses, you understand, you understand common stocks. I mean if if you really know how business works, you are, you are an investment manager, what, what, how much you manage maybe just your own funds or maybe other people. And if you really are primarily interested in in getting assets under management, which is where the money is, you know, you don’t really have to understand that sort of thing. But but that’s not the case with Ted or TOT obviously. But I think the responsibility ought to be entirely with Greg. The responsibility with has been with me and I farmed out some of it and I used to think differently about how that would be handled. But I I think the responsibility should be that of the CEO and whatever that CEO decides may be helpful in in in effectuating that responsibility. You know that that’s that’s up to the Amber Heard decide at the time they’re running the money. But so I would say that my thinking on that has has developed to some extent as the sums have grown so large at Berkshire and we do not want to try and have you know 200 people around that are managing a billion each. It just doesn’t work. And I think that when you’re handling the sums that we will have, you’ve got to think very strategically about how to do very big things. And I think Greg is capable of doing that. I think I’ve missed a lot of stuff in the past. So I’m actually wiser about doing that now. But then I you know, I would do it better this time around than 2008 and 9 if something akin to that happened. But it won’t be exactly like 2008 or 9, You can be sure of that. But you also can say that there will be times when having huge sums available extremely quickly. Maybe it’ll be once every five years, maybe it’ll probably be more like once every ten years or something. But the way as the world gets more sophisticated, complicated and intertwined more can go wrong. And and there’s no sense going through here and exploring the possibilities of the different things that could happen. But you would do do want to be able to act when it happens. And I think the chief executive should some be somebody that can weigh buying businesses buying stocks, doing all kinds of things that might come up at a time when nobody else is willing to move. It wasn’t that people didn’t have money in 2008. It’s it’s that they were they were paralyzed and and we did have the advantage of having some capital and and a willingness to an eagerness even to act and the government that that in effect looked at is as us as an asset instead of a liability. And I think that all of those qualities will be even more important as our capital pile grows. And so I think Greg may have even more fun than I had in in a period when extraordinary things were happening and and we were the logical place to go it. You never know whether it’ll be next week, next year, next decade, but you won’t be, you know, me, it won’t be a century from now, that is for sure. And the more intertwined and sophisticated the world financial situation gets, the more vulnerable it gets in a certain sense. It it solves a lot of small problems, but it leaves it more vulnerable to large problems. Greg, does that bother you at all or not? Without directly answering the question, I think there’s one important thing is I think as we go through any transition, it’s important to know that the capital allocation principles that Berkshire lives by today will continue to survive Warren. And I think that’s what the thing I’d want to communicate that will we have our operating businesses insurance, non insurance, we’re going to cap that. We’ll provide them the capital necessary to be successful and grow if it’s appropriate. At the same time, we’re expecting a return of capital from them when they have excess cash. And then as we’ve discussed or you’ve touched on always looking at potentially new businesses as a whole or in a piece and as you’ve always highlighted and I fully agree it’s we’re, we’ll always look at equities as we’re investing in a business either 1% or 100%. But we’re looking at the business, we’re looking at the economic prospects of that business and how sustainable it is and what it will look like 10 years from now. And is our the capital we originally put in at exponential risk or or where where is that risk set that profile. And then of course and then we’ll obviously have our our, our continue to always put excess cash in the safest investment there is in in U.S. Treasuries knowing we want to maintain that fortress of a balance sheet for two reasons one to act but also to always protect our shareholders. If we have a we want to maintain the position Berkshire is in now realistically for the to insure the to insured injuries. Well, when he says that, it makes me wish I’d stayed around to be #2 instead of #1 of this process over the years. It it’s it’s you know it it doesn’t get more fun than what we what we’re doing and and and and we’re better positioned than ever before. We’re not positioned Ohio, to earn extraordinary returns versus what American business generally earns. I’m in that as I’m you know, I would I would hope you’ll be slightly better but nobody’s going to be dramatically better in some you know over the next century. It gets very hard to, it gets very hard to predict who the winner will be in. And if you look back as we did in a few meetings ago as to the top 20 companies in the world that at 10 year intervals you realize the game isn’t quite as easy as as it looks. But getting a decent result actually is reasonably should be reasonably easy if you just don’t get talked out of doing what has works in the past and don’t get carried away with fads and don’t don’t listen to people who have different interests in in mine and the the interests of our shareholders.