Warren Buffett is stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of this year — but he may not actually stop working.
Instead of sitting at home, the 94-year-old plans to spend his post-CEO days regularly going into Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters to keep contributing his investment ideas and decision-making skills, he told the Wall Street Journal on May 14.
“I’m not going to sit at home and watch soap operas,” said Buffett. “My interests are still the same.”‘
Before Berkshire Hathaway’s most recent annual shareholders’ meeting, on May 3, Buffett hadn’t publicly announced plans to retire. Internally, he’d decided to “remain CEO as long as I thought I was more useful than anybody else … And it surprised me, you know, how long it went,” he said.
In May 2021, Buffett named his eventual successor as Greg Abel, the company’s vice-chairman of non-insurance operations. Recently, he compared his energy levels to Abel’s, and decided that his successor had surpassed him in terms of ability to be the company’s CEO, he told the Journal.
“The difference in energy level and just how much [Abel] could accomplish in a 10-hour day compared to what I could accomplish in a 10-hour day—the difference became more and more dramatic,” said Buffett. “He just was so much more effective at getting things done, making changes in management where they were needed, helping people that needed help someplace, but just all kinds of ways.”
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But even as Buffett occasionally loses his balance or has trouble recalling a person’s name, as the Journal reported, his ability to make smart decisions in turbulent markets hasn’t faltered, he said.
“I will be useful here if there’s a panic in the market because I don’t get fearful when things go down in price or everybody else gets scared,” said Buffett. “And that really isn’t a function of age.”
Buffett’s quasi-retirement isn’t unprecedented. A small but quickly growing number Americans are choosing to work past the age of 75, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Continuing to work seems like an especially prevalent mindset among business leaders, from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal. “My friend Warren Buffett still comes into the office six days a week,” Gates, 69, told CNBC Make It in September 2024. “So, I hope my health allows me to be like Warren.”
Sinegal, 89, stepped down from his own CEO role in 2012 — and still goes into the office some Tuesdays, The Wall Street Journal reported on April 16. He always viewed running Costco as more of a hobby than a job, and wanted to continue that sense of enjoyment even after leaving the CEO role, he told the Journal.
Sinegal’s sentiment echoes a notable piece of advice that Buffett wrote in his 2022 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: Job seekers should look for a role that “they would select, if they had no need for money.” The mindset is good for your career, and helps you live a longer, happier life, Buffett said at Berkshire Hathaway’s most recent shareholders’ meeting.
“I think a happy person lives longer than somebody that’s doing things they don’t really admire that much in life,” said Buffett.
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