Tag: Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Berkshire’s Charlie Munger says China right to clip Jack Ma’s wings, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Berkshire Hathaway Inc Vice Chairman Charlie Munger praised China‘s move to impose a sweeping restructuring on Jack Ma’s Ant Group, the fintech giant whose record $37 billion IPO was derailed by regulators in November.

The 97-year-old told CNBC in an interview alongside Berkshire CEO and billionaire investor Warren Buffett that the United States should take a leaf out of China’s book and “step in preemptively to stop speculation”.

“I don’t want the, all of the Chinese system, but I certainly would like to have the financial part of it in my own country,” he said in the interview aired on Tuesday in the United States.

Communist Party-ruled China “did the right thing” by reining in Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding , who has hardly been seen in public since he criticised regulators in a speech in October last year.

Chinese regulators pulled the plug on Alibaba affiliate Ant’s IPO and forced it to turn itself into a financial holding firm, a move expected to curb some of its freewheeling businesses.

Alibaba was also hit with a record $2.75 billion antitrust penalty as China tightens controls on the booming “platform economy”.

“Communists did the right thing. They just called in Jack Ma and say, “You aren’t gonna do it, sonny,” Munger said.

He also praised China’s response to the novel coronavirus. China imposed strictly enforced lockdowns and widespread curbs on movement, measures that would be less acceptable to Americans.

“They simply shut down the country for six weeks. And that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do,” Munger said.

Buffett said the pandemic had hurt smaller companies the most.

“I don’t know how many but many hundreds of thousands or millions of small businesses have been hurt in a terrible way, but most of the big, big companies have overwhelmingly done fine, unless they happen to be in cruise lines or, you know, or hotels or something,” he said.



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Buffett says Greg Abel is his likely successor at Berkshire, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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By Katherine Chiglinsky

Warren Buffett said Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s vice chairman of non-insurance businesses, would be his likely successor if the billionaire were to step down.

The board agrees that Abel, 58, would take over if anything were to happen to the 90-year-old chief executive officer, Buffett told CNBC. Abel had been seen as the most likely candidate.

Succession decisions had been a closely guarded secret at the conglomerate, even while the firm assured investors that it had a detailed plan in place. Ajit Jain, 69, was also often viewed as a potential pick given Buffett’s praise of the Berkshire vice chairman, who runs the insurance businesses. But age was a determining factor in the selection, according to Buffett.

“They’re both wonderful guys,” Buffett, who has spent five decades at the helm, told CNBC. “The likelihood of someone having a 20-year runway, though, makes a real difference.”

Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 97, made a remark at Saturday’s annual meeting that stoked speculation Abel was the chosen successor. Buffett was talking about how decentralization wouldn’t work everywhere because it requires a certain type of culture.

“Yeah, but we do,” Munger said. “And Greg will keep the culture.”

Abel has long been seen as the most likely candidate to replace Buffett, given his age and his wide remit overseeing all the non-insurance businesses at the conglomerate.

“The directors are in agreement that if something were to happen to me tonight, it would be Greg who’d take over tomorrow morning,” Buffett told CNBC. “We’ve always at Berkshire had basically a unanimous agreement as to who should take over the next day.”

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says
“We think Greg Abel would carry on Berkshire’s culture as Buffett’s successor.”
–Matthew Palazola, senior industry analyst, and Kylie Towbin, associate analyst.

Succession remains a huge topic for Berkshire given the ages of Buffett and Munger and their importance in building the company into the more than $630 billion conglomerate it is today. Any successor would take on a business overseeing a wide array of operations, from insurers to a railroad to energy companies and even retailers including Dairy Queen.

Both Abel and Jain joined Buffett and Munger on stage Saturday to field questions from shareholders at the company’s meeting, held virtually because of the pandemic.

Abel and Jain were both named vice chairmen in 2018 in promotions that Buffett said at the time were part of the “movement toward succession.” Abel, who previously led Berkshire’s sprawling energy empire, was picked to oversee all the non-insurance businesses, while Jain ran the insurers.

Abel rose to prominence at Berkshire as a key manager of its energy operations, building those units into a business that now has more than 23,000 employees. The executive, who grew up in Canada, is also an astute dealmaker, helping the energy business buy a Nevada utility, NV Energy, and an electric-transmission company in his native Alberta.

Now, Abel has an even wider mandate. He holds roles as a board member at Kraft Heinz Co., the packaged-food company that counts Berkshire as a key shareholder, and sets compensation for the CEOs of the company’s non-insurance businesses. Shareholders have gotten more of a glimpse of Abel in recent years, with the manager joining Buffett on stage at the annual meetings this year and in 2020.



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