NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 05:00 ET — Market closed
- Berkshire’s Class A and Class B shares ended modestly lower in the last trading session of 2025 as Warren Buffett wrapped up his final day as CEO.
- Greg Abel assumes the CEO role on Jan. 1 while Buffett remains chairman, keeping focus on continuity and capital allocation.
- Investors are watching for early signals on the stock portfolio, buybacks and Berkshire’s next earnings update in late February.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s shares closed slightly lower on Wednesday as Warren Buffett wrapped up his last day as chief executive and handed the job to Greg Abel for Thursday.
The Class A stock dipped $600, or 0.1%, to $754,800 and the Class B stock (BRK.B) fell $1.06, or 0.2%, to $502.65, outperforming a 0.7% drop in the S&P 500.
The handoff ends Buffett’s six-decade run in the top job and shifts attention to how Berkshire operates without him in the CEO seat. Buffett, 95, will remain chairman and plans to keep working from Omaha, offering Abel support.
The stakes are high because Berkshire has become too large for small mistakes to stay small. A quarterly filing showed the conglomerate ended September with $381.7 billion of cash and equivalents, leaving investors focused on how the company deploys that money.
Abel, 63, joined Berkshire in 2000 through its MidAmerican Energy deal and has overseen the non-insurance businesses since 2018. Ajit Jain will keep day-to-day oversight of insurance, while NetJets chief executive Adam Johnson will oversee consumer products, services and retail units.
A key open question is who ultimately steers Berkshire’s $283.2 billion stock portfolio — including major holdings such as Apple and American Express — after investment manager Todd Combs left this month for JPMorgan Chase. Buffett has previously said Abel could handle the role.
CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert said investors would likely applaud a management style that “buttons things up,” even as Berkshire preserves its decentralized structure. Courthouse News
Berkshire has also been reshaping its finance bench: an SEC filing said Chief Financial Officer Marc Hamburg will resign as CFO on June 1, 2026, with Charles C. Chang set to succeed him, while Hamburg remains until his retirement on June 1, 2027.
For shareholders, the near-term question is less about day-to-day operations — Abel already runs much of the business — and more about capital allocation. Berkshire earns investment income on cash and insurance “float,” the premium money it holds before claims get paid, so interest-rate moves can ripple into results.
Before the next session, traders will watch whether the year-end dip holds as U.S. markets reopen Friday after the New Year’s Day holiday. The Class B shares sit about 7% below their 52-week high of $542.07 and about 14% above their 52-week low of $440.10, while analysts tracked by Investing.com put the average 12-month price target near $529.
On the macro front, the Labor Department is scheduled to release the December employment report on January 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET, according to the agency’s calendar. The jobs data often shifts rate expectations that feed into Berkshire’s investment income.
Weekly jobless claims fell to 199,000 for the week ended Dec. 27, and the Federal Reserve has already started cutting rates while debating how much further to go, Reuters reported. Markets have leaned heavily on labor data to price the next move.
