Retaining Talent

“You don’t want a CEO who’s going to change that and drive managers away,” Howard Buffett told Liu. “That’s probably one of the key parts of it, is just making sure that part of the culture remains intact. And people that are best suited to run the business run the business.”

Warren Buffett said last year that Berkshire’s board selected a manager to be the next CEO, without identifying the person. The billionaire has also ceded more oversight of the company’s $88 billion stock portfolio to Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, investment managers he hired in the past three years.

Howard Buffett is the second of the billionaire’s three children and the only one on Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire’s board. He said it’s hard to predict how much time he would have to spend on Berkshire responsibilities once he becomes chairman.

He lives and farms in central Illinois, and travels the world as executive director of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which works to improve subsistence agriculture and resolve conflicts tied to food shortages.

One commitment he may have to scale back: serving as an auxiliary deputy sheriff in Macon County, Illinois.

“It’s probably not great for me to strap a gun on and go out in the streets with the sheriff with that responsibility,” he told Liu. “So there will probably be some things I won’t do, or shouldn’t do, and that’s fine. But I’m doing it now, because I have the opportunity to do it.”

First « 1 2 » Next