Berkshire Hathaway Decides on Eventual Successor to CEO Buffett

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s 75-year-old chief executive, said the company’s board had selected an executive to eventually succeed him.

The board chose from three internal candidates at the Omaha-based insurance and investment company, Buffett wrote in his annual letter released Saturday. He didn’t identify them or discuss the timing of succession.

“Berkshire’s board has fully discussed each of the three CEO candidates and has unanimously agreed on the person who should succeed me if a replacement were needed today,” wrote Buffett, who took control in 1965.

Buffett, labeled “the world’s greatest investor” in Robert Hagstrom’s 1994 biography, created a $135-billion holding company from a failing textile manufacturer by acquiring out-offavor securities and businesses.

Shares of Berkshire climbed an average 31% a year in the decade through 1998, the year that Buffett bought reinsurer General Re. Berkshire’s stock has fallen 2.4% in the last year and has produced below-average returns since 2001.

Buffett, the world’s second-richest man behind Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates, has accumulated dozens of units selling products such as insurance, paint, carpets and mobile homes, as well as gas and electric utilities.