- In today’s CEO Daily: Shawn Tully on Warren Buffett’s successor, Greg Abel
- The big story: Trump moves on China and TikTok.
- The markets: Happy.
- Analyst notes from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. It was the most widely watched and speculated upon succession race of all time: Who would succeed Warren Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO? Buffett’s long-time partner, the then 97-year old Charlie Munger, ended the mystery at the 2021 annual meeting by letting slip that the choice, made well before but long kept secret, was Greg Abel. Though the Oracle of Omaha has long been lauded for his golden gut for picking stocks and companies to acquire, this is his biggest bet yet. In a new feature for Fortune I profiled the little-known Abel, and teased out a few key lessons about succession along the way.
Give it time: For two decades, Buffett and Munger got to watch Abel in action as he built one of Berkshire biggest, strongest pillars: Its $26 billion energy franchise. They got to see Abel build what was a mid-sized Iowa utility into a powerhouse that delivers electricity to over 5 million customers. Over the years Abel’s multiple skills became visible—he proved himself not just as a day-to-day operator, someone who doesn’t take foolish risks, but also a leader who is willing to pounce when others are too fearful to move.
Culture wins: Buffett was careful to anoint someone who is a cultural fit. He’ll never sing “My Way” on the Today show like his mentor, but Buffett’s successor shares his outgoing, ultra-trustworthy personality that should continue to be a magnet.
Demand results: While Buffett is famously hands-off, his successor isn’t. Insiders say if you’re lagging, you’ll get a call from Greg and a few months to get back on track. He’s shown he won’t flinch in changing management personnel, as he recently proved by shifting the C-suite at the $50 billion Pilot Travel Centers truck stop empire.
Buffett’s still sharp as ever, and has announced no plans to retire. But the man he calls “tougher than I am” brings the right blend of continuity plus a newfound determination to shape up the laggards to what will be the arguably the biggest, hardest job in corporate America in the decades to come: Filling Buffett’s shoes. You can read all about Abel and what we know about his plans for Berkshire Hathaway here.
Meanwhile in Davos, Fortune CEO Anastasia Nyrkovskaya spoke on a WEF panel about AI and the future of media with The Atlantic's Nicholas Thompson and ProRata founder Bill Gross. The panel’s opinions varied from those aggressively seeking to protect their content from LLMs — like Universal Music Group head Frank Briegmann — to more of a wait-and-see approach. All agreed the need to figure out how to get compensated in an AI world is an existential threat. One jarring stat from Gross: While Google historically crawled publisher content six times a day to deliver relevant search results, major LLMs now crawl it 250-plus times a day. In the end, the conversation veered toward rebuilding trust. If publishers want to be compensated as trusted sources of information in a AI world, they need readers need to start seeing them as reputable again too.
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Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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