Warren Buffett steps down, ending an era at Berkshire
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
Greg Abel has officially taken the reins at Berkshire Hathaway, stepping into the role long held by the titan of value investing, Warren Buffett. We look at what Abel’s leadership could mean for an empire that touches everything from energy to insurance. Plus, stocks had a strong year, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posting double-digit gains, but the job market tells a very different story. And do professional movie critics still matter in an age of Reddit threads and Letterboxd reviews?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Two-Faced January meets the economy that also looks two ways at once. |
| 0:07.5 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. It is official Greg Abel is now boss of one of the most storied of American companies, Berkshire Hathaway. |
| 0:16.7 | It's a filling big shoes story. Abel replaces a man named Buffett who turned a textile firm into a money-making powerhouse. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzor joins us now. First, Nancy, you look under the hood in a lot of industries, and it's often Berkshire sitting there. |
| 0:33.7 | Absolutely. Berkshire Hathaway is a huge conglomerate. Over the years, it swallowed up companies like Geico Insurance, BNSF Railway, Bell Laboratories. And Warren Buffett also became known as the Oracle of Omaha for his stock picks and his ability to keep beating the market. |
| 0:51.4 | Now it's Mr. Abel in the chair. Been around, right? Yeah, Abel is hardly a |
| 0:57.4 | newcomer. He was already vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He ran the companies that owns |
| 1:02.0 | outside of the insurance business. And he's been a more active manager than Warren Buffett, |
| 1:07.2 | who's pretty hands-off at Berkshire's annual meeting in 2025, Abel said he would |
| 1:12.5 | keep advising the leaders of Berkshire's various businesses. |
| 1:16.6 | But if there's opportunities to see where maybe you've seen something in another business |
| 1:22.7 | or an opportunity I may see in their industry, we're going to discuss it and see if that's |
| 1:28.4 | something we should pursue or are we properly addressing the risk. |
| 1:33.4 | Now, Nancy, how Warren Buffett invests is the subject of entire libraries? |
| 1:38.6 | How's the new guy go about it? |
| 1:41.0 | Yeah, over the years, Berkshire Hathaway bought such a variety of companies that in some ways it's seen as a bellwether of the U.S. economy. |
| 1:48.5 | And Berkshire is sitting on a pile of cash. Buffett has been selling stock. |
| 1:53.9 | And Apole doesn't seem to be in a rush to go out and spend that money in the market. |
| 1:58.2 | He says Berkshire's cash is an enormous asset that'll be a cushion |
| 2:02.5 | if there's an economic downturn. All right, Nancy, thank you. It is the first business day of |
| 2:08.9 | the new year, and we can now tell you the popular S&P 500 stock index went up 17% in 2025, went about |
| 2:16.4 | 10% as the average return. The NASDAQ index fueled in part |
| 2:20.5 | by artificial intelligence mania went up 20% in the year just ended. But there is more to life |
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