Inside a Surprise Exit With Big Implications for Berkshire

On the March 5 bonus episode of The Morning Filter_, _co-host Susan Dziubinski met with Morningstar senior analyst Greggory Warren to discuss Berkshire Hathaway after Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO, what new CEO Greg Abel might do differently from Buffett, and what Todd Combs’ exit from Berkshire means for Abel. Here is an excerpt from the show.

What New CEO Greg Abel Might Do Differently From Warren Buffett

Susan Dziubinski: So let’s talk a little bit about Greg Abel, who has taken over as CEO right at the end of last year. So what would you say are his strengths? And then, is there anything that you think that he might do differently?

Greggory Warren: He’s different than Buffett. He’s an operations guy. And I think at this point in Berkshire’s lifecycle, they need an operations guy. Buffett was never interested in overseeing the operations. He was not interested in getting down in the weeds and understanding how the businesses operated. He was content with getting updates regularly from the managers and the capital coming up from below. So, different management style to begin with. And again, like I said, I think that’s what Berkshire needs at this point. There are definitely places within the organization where I think they would benefit from having somebody who’s more operations-focused helping to improve things.

And Greg’s always been, in our view, a little bit more of an alpha personality, a little bit more driven. Buffett is less confrontational, prefers to sort of be in the background. So it will change. And like I said, I think Berkshire needs to do that. Because we’ve gone from this historical 60-plus years where Buffett ran the show, built up this very, very large business, had a certain way of doing things. And that worked, for the most part, for a long time. But it’s gotten to the point now where there’s just so much excess capital on the books. And there’s the environment in which they’re operating has shifted, or the way they’d like to operate, which is continue to acquire companies and actually make big-scale investments in stocks. It’s a lot harder for them to do that than it was, say, 20, 30 years ago.

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What Todd Combs’ Departure Means for Berkshire Hathaway

Dziubinski: Now, last December, and you mentioned this, that Todd Combs, who had been overseeing Geico, was leaving Berkshire for a new position at JPMorgan Chase JPM. So what did you make of that? And are you expecting to maybe see, I know, I think their CFO moved out, retired as well. So talk a little bit about executive changes at Berkshire, aside from, of course, Warren Buffett.

Warren: I mean, with Mark Hamburg, it doesn’t surprise me. I mean, he’s been there forever.

Dziubinski: And he was the CFO, right?

Warren: Yeah. So his departure doesn’t surprise me. And basically Abel’s bringing in somebody he knows. It’s the guy who was running the books over at Berkshire Hathaway Energy for a long, long time. So from that perspective, that wasn’t too surprising. Todd leaving was a bit of a surprise. I thought he did a fantastic job at Geico. I don’t think he got enough credit from investors for what a monumental task he had to deal with. Because if you don’t remember, he took over in December of 2019. And at that point, Geico was already dealing with several years of poor underwriting performance based on poor decisions they made. They got too aggressive going after market share, underwrote a lot of business that they shouldn’t have. And it basically hurt them on the loss ratio front for many years. And so when he came in, he was going to target that.

And then, lo and behold, covid hit. And the whole US auto insurance market got turned on and said for a number of years. I mean, we’re only really now sort of getting back to sort of normalized results. But it’s taken, I mean, auto insurance prices are up 55% in the past, since the end of 2019. So from that perspective, I mean, they had to do that. Because the cost of replacement vehicles, the cost of replacement parts, even the amount of incidences, amount of accidents, the severity of accidents and stuff like that, went spiked for a number of years. Some of that’s starting to come down, but the inflation is still there. I mean, the inflation didn’t go away.

So, we’ll have to see how things pan out from here. I mean, it would be nice to have him sort of in the helm. Because we’re looking at a, probably a multiyear sort of declining price environment for this, because the state regulators at this point, are starting to look at the profitability of the industry, and they’re calling for pricing to come down. So from that perspective, it’d be interesting to see what happens. But, I mean, he hadn’t been as focused on the investment portfolio in that time. And he’s been sitting on the board at J.P. Morgan for a number of years. He’s very close with Jamie Dimon. So he got an offer that he just couldn’t refuse. It’s a good opportunity for him. So I understand why, but at the same time, I think it’s just one less good advisor that Abel will have around to help him.

Subscribe to The Morning Filter on Apple Podcasts_, or wherever you get your podcasts, and keep up with the latest research from hosts Susan Dziubinski and David Sekera on Morningstar.com._

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			33m 32s
		 Mar 4, 2026

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