• Warren Buffett will retire from Berkshire Hathaway by the end of the year and has recommended Greg Abel as his successor.
• Buffett emphasised the importance of global trade, cautioning against using it as a weapon.
• Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter profits of US$9.6 billion ($16b), down 14%.

Influential American billionaire investor Warren Buffett has said he would retire from leading his Berkshire Hathaway business group by the end of the year and that he would recommend his chosen successor Greg Abel take over.

Buffett’s success, coupled with his ability to explain his thinking in clear soundbites, has made him highly influential in the business and financial communities, earning him the nickname “The Oracle of Omaha”.

Several years ago, Buffett had already indicated that the 62-year-old Abel would be his pick for successor in an interview with CNBC.

“The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” Buffett, 94, told an annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, the Midwestern city where Berkshire Hathaway is based.

Buffett said he believed the board of directors would be “unanimously in favour of” his recommendation.

“I would still hang around and could conceivably be useful in a few cases, but the final word would be what Greg said in operations, in capital deployment, whatever it might be,” he added.

Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a medium-sized textile company when he bought it in the 1960s into a giant conglomerate, now valued at more than US$1 trillion ($1.7t) and with liquid assets of US$300 billion ($504b).

The company today reported first-quarter profits of US$9.6b, down 14%. That works out to US$4.47 ($7.52) per share, also down sharply.

Buffett’s net worth as today was US$168.2b, according to Forbes magazine’s real-time rich list.

“I have no intention – zero – of selling one share of Berkshire Hathaway. I will give it away eventually,” Buffett told shareholders, who responded with a standing ovation.

“The decision to keep every share is an economic decision because I think the prospects of Berkshire will be better under Greg’s management than mine.”

Abel, a long-time core figure of Berkshire, joined the business group in the energy division in 1992 and has been on the board of directors since 2018.

“So that’s the news hook for the day,” Buffett quipped.

Trade ‘should not be a weapon’

Buffett earlier used the stage to declare that “trade should not be a weapon”, in remarks clearly targeting US President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs against countries around the world.

“There is no question that trade can be an act of war,” he said, without actually mentioning Trump by name.

Those comments came as analysts in the United States and abroad have expressed growing concern that tariffs could seriously slow global growth.

Two months ago, Buffett told a CBS interviewer that tariffs “are a tax on goods” – and not a relatively painless revenue-raiser, as Trump has suggested – adding, “I mean, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t pay ‘em!”

Today, Buffett urged Washington to continue trading with the rest of the world, saying: “We should do what we do best and they should do what they do best. That’s what we did originally.”

Achieving prosperity is not a zero-sum game, with one country’s successes meaning another’s losses, he said. Both can prosper.

“I do think that the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won’t be at our expense. The more prosperous we’ll become, and the safer we’ll feel,” Buffett said.

He added that it can be dangerous for one country to offend the rest of the world while claiming superiority.

“It’s a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven-and-a-half billion people that don’t like you very well, and you got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they’ve done,” Buffett told shareholders.

Compared to that dynamic, he said, the financial markets’ recent gyrations are “really nothing”.

– Agence France-Presse