“Warren Buffett mengatakan Greg Abel seharusnya memiliki keputusan terakhir tentang investasi di Berkshire Hathaway, dengan jelas menunjukkan bahwa penerusnya akan memiliki kewenangan tidak hanya atas pengambilalihan tetapi juga portofolio saham raksasa dari konglomerat yang besar itu. Pada pertemuan umum tahunan Berkshire di Omaha pada hari Sabtu, Buffett memberikan jawaban paling langsung hingga saat ini tentang bagaimana tanggung jawab akan dibagikan di antara tim eksekutif kecil yang suatu hari nanti akan memimpin perusahaan tersebut, memberikan tanggung jawab kepada Abel untuk bagaimana ratusan miliar dolar dialokasikan. “Saya pikir tanggung jawab seharusnya sepenuhnya ada di tangan Greg,” kata Buffett dari panggung di CHI Health Center di pusat kota Omaha. “Saya dulu berpikir berbeda tentang bagaimana hal itu akan ditangani, tetapi saya pikir tanggung jawab seharusnya menjadi milik CEO.” Dia mengatakan bahwa dewan Berkshire pada akhirnya akan membuat keputusan ketika dia meninggal, meskipun dia mengatakan “saya mungkin mencoba untuk kembali dan menghantui mereka jika mereka melakukannya dengan cara yang berbeda”. Investor telah mengharapkan bahwa Abel akan memimpin anak perusahaan operasional perusahaan dan menjadi orang yang akan melakukan perburuan besar-besaran Berkshire – cara Buffett merujuk pada akuisisi multibillion-dollar di mana dia telah membuat namanya. Tetapi banyak yang mengantisipasi bahwa portofolio saham Berkshire senilai $336 miliar akan jatuh ke tangan deputi investasi Buffett, Todd Combs dan Ted Weschler, dan bahwa kedua pria tersebut bisa memainkan peran besar dalam bagaimana tumpukan kas sebesar $189 miliar perusahaan tersebut dideploy. “Saya pikir kepala eksekutif seharusnya menjadi seseorang yang dapat menimbang membeli bisnis, membeli saham, melakukan segala jenis hal yang mungkin muncul pada saat ketika tidak ada orang lain yang bersedia bergerak,” katanya. Abel telah memainkan peran besar dalam akuisisi Berkshire, termasuk pengambilalihan PacifiCorp pada tahun 2006, dan bisnis pipa Dominion Energy pada tahun 2020. Buffett mengungkapkan selama pertemuan umum tahunan bahwa Abel juga telah memainkan peran dalam tawaran gagal Berkshire untuk distributor teknologi Tech Data pada tahun 2019. Tidak jelas apakah Abel akan ingin menjalankan portofolio saham biasa sendiri, atau hanya memiliki manajer investasi melaporkan kepadanya, memungkinkan mereka untuk melakukan perdagangan mereka sendiri. Tahun lalu, Abel mengatakan kepada CNBC bahwa Combs dan Weschler menjalankan portofolio mereka sendiri “dan itulah cara itu akan selalu berjalan, dan mereka akan mengelolanya sesuai”. “Saya mungkin akan bertanya kepada mereka: ‘Itu benar-benar menarik. Apa yang memicu minat Anda?'” kata Abel tentang percakapannya dengan Combs dan Weschler mengenai investasi saham mereka. “Tapi itu saja. Dan di luar memiliki hubungan dengan keduanya, yang penting, itu adalah portofolio mereka.” Buffett dalam beberapa tahun terakhir telah berbicara tentang bagaimana dia memiliki pandangan yang sama tentang alokasi modal dengan Abel, yang naik melalui bisnis utilitas perusahaan dan sekarang memiliki pengawasan atas semua operasi non-asuransi perusahaan tersebut sebagai wakil ketua. Dia menambahkan bahwa keputusannya dipengaruhi oleh ukuran besar Berkshire. “Kami tidak ingin mencoba dan memiliki 200 orang di sekitar yang mengelola $1 miliar masing-masing.” Christopher Rossbach, kepala investasi pemegang saham Berkshire J Stern & Co, mengatakan komentar Buffett “sangat signifikan” karena menunjukkan “bagian dari jalan ke depan”. Dia menambahkan bahwa itu menimbulkan pertanyaan baru, termasuk bagaimana Abel akan mendekati pengelolaan portofolio saham. Pemegang saham Berkshire berbaris untuk berfoto selfie dengan Greg Abel © AP “Kami belum mendengar banyak dari Greg tentang investasi publik,” kata Rossbach. “Ini akan menjadi bagian dari transisi yang berkelanjutan, untuk belajar lebih lanjut tentang bagaimana bisnis itu akan diatur, dan kemudian juga lebih tentang bagaimana Greg Abel memandangnya.” Dibandingkan dengan tahun-tahun sebelumnya, Abel mengambil peran yang lebih besar dalam pertemuan hari Sabtu ini, pertama sejak mitra bisnis jangka panjang Buffett dan wakil ketua Berkshire, Charlie Munger, meninggal pada November. Buffett juga menyerahkan bagian resmi hari itu – ketika proposal pemegang saham diadakan – kepada Abel untuk memimpin, dengan alasan kesulitan dengan suara dan penglihatannya sendiri. Abel menghabiskan hari itu duduk di sebelah Buffett di panggung untuk kedua sesi pagi dan sore; wakil ketua Ajit Jain, yang menjalankan operasi asuransi, hanya bergabung untuk bagian pertama hari itu. Abel tampak rileks saat berbicara tentang bagaimana kereta api BNSF berperforma, bagaimana Buffett mendekati investasinya di Occidental Petroleum, serta bagaimana menangani litigasi atas kebakaran hutan – termasuk upayanya untuk mendapatkan undang-undang negara yang akan membatasi kewajiban perusahaan dalam bencana masa depan. “Kami tidak ingin membuang modal yang baik setelah modal yang buruk,” kata Abel tentang bisnis utilitas setelah kebakaran hutan, mengulangi komentar Buffett dalam surat tahunannya pada Februari. “Kami akan sangat disiplin di sana.” Investor melihat Abel sebagai operator yang kuat dari bisnis inti Berkshire, membantu meningkatkan margin dan profitabilitas perusahaan, sebuah poin yang diakui oleh Buffett pada hari Sabtu. “Jika Anda memiliki 20 anak dan Anda sangat kaya Anda akan memiliki beberapa yang akan menjadi pemain keras bagaimanapun juga dan Anda akan memiliki beberapa yang tidak,” kata Buffett. “Kami adalah perusahaan yang sangat, sangat kaya dan kami tidak memiliki sejarah menjadi sangat keras pada orang yang bersantai.” “Greg akan melakukan sesuatu tentang itu,” tambahnya. Pada awalnya, Buffett secara tidak sengaja menyebut Abel sebagai “Charlie” ketika memberikan pertanyaan kepadanya. Arena yang dipadati – begitu penuh sehingga ratusan orang duduk di belakang panggung, tidak dapat melihat Buffett secara langsung – pecah dalam tepuk tangan yang bergemuruh. “Saya begitu terbiasa. . . ,” katanya, sebelum tertawa. “Saya sudah memeriksa diri saya beberapa kali. Saya akan selip lagi.” Ditanyakan apa yang akan dilakukan jika dia memiliki satu hari lagi dengan Munger, Buffett menjawab: “Kami memiliki banyak kesenangan melakukan apa pun. Kami akan bermain golf bersama. Kami akan bermain tenis bersama. Kami melakukan segala sesuatu bersama. . . kami memiliki kesenangan, mungkin bahkan lebih dalam beberapa hal, dengan hal-hal yang gagal karena itu kita benar-benar harus bekerja.” Kematian Munger menekankan fakta bahwa mungkin tidak akan banyak pertemuan lagi yang menampilkan Buffett. Dominic Evans, yang berkunjung ke Omaha dari London, mengantri sejak pukul 4:45 pagi agar bisa mendapatkan tempat duduk yang bagus. Dia mengatakan bahwa dia ingin datang untuk “menunjukkan dukungannya” kepada Buffett. “Siapkan tisu untuk tahun ini karena, Anda tahu, Anda telah kehilangan seseorang yang merupakan guru yang hebat,” katanya. “Untungnya, begitu banyak materinya sudah ada di luar sana. . . tetapi, Anda tahu, itu akan tidak tergantikan.” Buffett mengakui kematian dirinya beberapa kali pada hari Sabtu. Dia mengatakan kepada para pemegang saham: “Saya tidak hanya berharap Anda datang tahun depan, tetapi saya juga berharap saya datang tahun depan.” – “Warren Buffett said Greg Abel should have the final decision on investments at Berkshire Hathaway, making clear that his successor will have authority over not just takeovers but the sprawling conglomerate’s mammoth stock portfolio as well.At Berkshire’s annual general meeting in Omaha on Saturday, Buffett gave his most direct answer yet on how responsibilities will be doled out among the small executive team that will one day lead the company, handing Abel responsibility for how hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated.“I think the responsibility ought to be entirely with Greg,” Buffett said from the stage at the CHI Health Center in downtown Omaha. “I used to think differently about how that would be handled, but I think that the responsibility should be that of the CEO.”He said Berkshire’s board would ultimately make the decision when he dies, although he said “I may try to come back and haunt them if they do it differently”.Investors had expected that Abel would lead the company’s operating subsidiaries and be the person to do Berkshire’s big game hunting — how Buffett refers to the multibillion-dollar acquisitions on which he has made his name.But many had anticipated Berkshire’s $336bn stock portfolio would fall to Buffett’s two investment deputies, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, and that those two men could play a large role in how the company’s $189bn cash pile is deployed. “I think the chief executive should be somebody that can weigh buying businesses, buying stocks, doing all kinds of things that might come up at a time when nobody else is willing to move,” he said.Abel has played a large role in Berkshire’s acquisitions, including its takeovers of PacifiCorp in 2006, and Dominion Energy’s pipeline business in 2020. Buffett disclosed during the annual general meeting that Abel had also played a role in Berkshire’s failed bid for technology distributor Tech Data in 2019. It was unclear if Abel would want to run the common stock portfolio himself, or simply have the investment managers report to him, allowing them to make their own trades.Last year, Abel told CNBC that Combs and Weschler ran their own portfolios “and that’s the way it’ll always be, and they’ll manage it accordingly”. “I may ask them: ‘That was really interesting. What triggered your interest?’” Abel said of his conversations with Combs and Weschler over their stock investments. “But that’s the extent of it. And outside of having relationships with both of them, which are important, that’s their portfolio.”Buffett in recent years has talked about how he shares similar views on capital allocation to Abel, who rose through the company’s utility business and now has oversight over all of its non-insurance operations as vice-chair. He added that his decision was influenced by the sheer size of Berkshire. “We do not want to try and have 200 people around that are managing $1bn each.”Christopher Rossbach, the chief investment officer of Berkshire shareholder J Stern & Co, said the comment by Buffett was “very significant” as it showed “part of the path forward”. He added that it raised new questions, including how Abel would approach managing the stock portfolio.Berkshire shareholders line up to take selfies with Greg Abel © AP“We have not heard much from Greg yet about the public investments,” Rossbach said. “It’s going to be part of this ongoing transition, to learn more about how that business is going to be structured, and then also more about how Greg Abel thinks of it.”Compared to previous years, Abel took on a larger role at Saturday’s meeting, the first since Buffett’s longtime business partner and Berkshire vice-chair Charlie Munger died in November. Buffett also turned the official portion of the day — when shareholder proposals were voted on — over to Abel to lead, citing trouble with his own voice and eyesight.Abel spent the day sitting next to Buffett on stage for both the morning and afternoon sessions; vice-chair Ajit Jain, who runs the insurance operations, only joined for the first part of the day. Abel appeared relaxed as he spoke about how the BNSF railroad was performing, how Buffett had approached his investment in Occidental Petroleum, as well as how it was handling litigation over wildfires — including its push to get state laws passed that would limit its liabilities in future catastrophes.“We don’t want to throw good capital after bad capital,” Abel said of the utility business following the wildfires, repeating a comment Buffett made in his annual letter in February. “We’ll be very disciplined there.”Investors have seen Abel as a strong operator of Berkshire’s underlying businesses, helping improve margins and profitability at the company, a point Buffett credited him with on Saturday. “If you have 20 children and you are very rich you’ll have some that will be go-getters anyway and you’ll have some that won’t,” Buffett said. “We are a very, very rich company and we haven’t had a history of being very tough on people that coasted.”“Greg will do something about it,” he added.At the start, Buffett mistakenly referred to Abel as “Charlie” when passing a question to him. The packed arena — so full that hundreds of people sat behind the stage, unable to see Buffett in the flesh — broke into a thunderous applause.“I’m so used to . . . ” he said, before laughing. “I checked myself a couple times already. I’ll slip again.”RecommendedAsked what he would do if he had one more day with Munger, Buffett replied: “We had a lot of fun doing anything. We’d play golf together. We’d play tennis together. We did everything together . . . we had as much fun, perhaps even more to some extent, with things that failed because then we really had to work.”Munger’s death emphasised the fact that there may not be many more meetings featuring Buffett. Dominic Evans, who travelled to Omaha from London, got in line at 4:45am so he could get a good seat. He said he wanted to come to “show his support” for Buffett.“Bring out the Kleenex for this year because, you know, you’ve lost somebody who’s a great teacher,” he said. “Luckily, so much of his material is already out there . . . but, you know, it’s going to be irreplaceable.” Buffett acknowledged his mortality several times on Saturday. He told shareholders: “I not only hope you come next year, but I hope I come next year.”Buffett’s best lines in Omaha in 2024On Berkshire’s disastrous investment in Paramount“I think I’m smarter now than I was a year or two ago, but I also think I’m poorer because I acquired the knowledge in the manner I did . . . We lost money on Paramount and I did it all by myself folks.”On the threat to Treasuries from the rising national debt“My best speculation is that US debt will be acceptable for a very long time because there’s not much alternative. But it won’t be the quantity. You know, the national debt was nothing to speak of for a long long time.”On why he’s not deploying more of Berkshire’s $189bn cash pile“I don’t think anybody sitting at this table has any idea of how to use it effectively and therefore we don’t use it now at 5.4 per cent but we wouldn’t use it if it was at 1 per cent. Don’t tell the Federal Reserve that, we prefer it. We only swing at pitches we like.”Buffett’s deputies, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain, on the recordAjit Jain on Tesla’s self-driving cars and the impact on insurance“The point I want to make in terms of Tesla and the fact that they feel that because of their technology the number of accidents [will] come down. That is certainly provable. But what needs to be factored in as well is the pay cost of each one of these accidents has skyrocketed.”Greg Abel on maintaining Berkshire’s unique culture“The culture we have at Berkshire, and that being our shareholders being our partners and our managers of our business having that ownership mentality, that’s never going to change and that will attract the right managers at every level.””
