Greg Abel: The man who will succeed Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway has confirmed that Greg Abel, Berkshire’s vice chairman of non-insurance businesses, would most likely succeed him if he stepped down.

Buffett told CNBC that the board was in agreement that the 58-year-old would be the most likely successor at the company if anything were to happen to him.

Greg Abel was born in Alberta, Canada, according to a 2016 Fortune profile of the executive. According to a CBS report, a former amateur hockey player and an avid golfer, Abel joined Buffet’s Berkshire in 2000 after the company took over MidAmerican, a regional energy company with only $ 122 million in sales, where Abel was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Abel then renamed MidAmerican to Berkshire Hathaway Energy and managed to make it the largest producer of wind energy in the USA, the report added.

In 2018, Abel was made the vice chairman of the Berkshire’s non insurance businesses.

According to Forbes, Abel is worth an estimated $ 484 million as he owns take in its privately held energy subsidiary, despite owning very little of Berkshire’s publicly traded stock. As per the annual report of the company, Abel owns a 1 percent stake in Berkshire Hathaway Energy, billionaire Walter Scott owns 7.9% and the remaining is owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

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 and his more than two decades of association with Berkshire.

Buffett’s comments cements the view that Abel would take over from him, after spending nearly five decades at the helm. “The directors are in agreement that if something were to happen to me tonight, it would be Greg who’d take over tomorrow morning,” Buffet told CNBC.