Who Is Howie Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s New Chairman?

Warren Buffett said Friday he is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B -2.04%decrease; down pointing triangle, naming his 71-year-old son Howard Buffett as the new chair.

The move to name Howard—who goes by Howie—has long been part of the succession planning at the $1 trillion conglomerate Warren Buffett has controlled since 1965.

Who is Howie Buffett? Here are five things to know:

In an interview for a 2025 Wall Street Journal article, Warren Buffett was unabashed about the rationale for picking Howie Buffett:

“He is getting it because he’s my son,” he said.

Warren Buffett put extensive thought into succession at Berkshire, saying “I care more about the future of Berkshire after I die than during the period I’m alive.” Berkshire, he said, was the type of successful company “that takes a long time to build and could be torn apart very easily if it fell into the hands of people who would want to break it up.”

At a 2013 investor conference in Omaha, Neb., investor Doug Kass—who was short Berkshire stock—challenged Warren Buffett on the plan.

“Howard has never run a diversified business, nor is he an expert on enterprise risk-management,” he said. “Away from the accident of birth, how is Howard the most qualified person to take on this role?”

Warren Buffett retorted that the job was different than Kass described.

“He won’t have to think about running the business,” he said. “He’ll only have to think about whether the board—and himself, but as a member of the board—whether the board may need to change the CEO.”

Howie Buffett doesn’t have the standard resume of a massive conglomerate’s chairman. As a young adult, he dropped out of college, worked at Berkshire’s candy company See’s and eventually turned to agriculture—running a farm his father bought. (He said he paid market-rate rent.)

He worked some in the public sector, winning a seat as a county commissioner in Omaha in the late 1980s, and he chaired the state ethanol board. Later, in 2017 and 2018, he served as sheriff of Macon County in central Illinois, a post that came after serving as an auxiliary deputy.

His work in corporate America was largely in agriculture. In the 1990s, he was a vice president and assistant to the chairman at agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland. He then served as partner and investor at agricultural equipment maker GSI Group.

Berkshire’s new chairman has corporate board experience.

Starting with ADM in 1991, Howie Buffett has served on numerous boards across corporate America—some with Berkshire Hathaway ties. The roster includes Coca-Cola—a longtime Berkshire holding—bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises, Slim Jim and Hunt’s ketchup maker ConAgra Foods, and others.

The most relevant experience: He has been on Berkshire’s board since 1993.

For years, Warren Buffett has been dispersing some of his Berkshire shares to charitable foundations run by his children—Howie included. He has said all of his remaining stake in Berkshire will be transferred to his children’s foundations by 2034.

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation’s focus has been food security and agriculture. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, his foundation pumped more than $800 million toward Ukrainian food assistance, demining operations and war-crime investigations, among other causes.

In the 2025 interview with the Journal, Howie Buffett didn’t let on much about any vision for Berkshire. Much about the company shouldn’t change, he said. He intends to continue Berkshire’s tradition of annual meetings where shareholders pepper management with questions for hours on end, he said.

On one point—Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters—he was unequivocal: “It will never move from Omaha, Nebraska.”