While Joe Biden buries Reaganism, another page turns in American capitalism. Warren Buffett, who was for a long time the richest man in the world and still has the sixth American fortune with 105 billion dollars (about 87.2 billion euros), is about to bow out. At 90, he finally indicated the name of his successor to lead the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate: Greg Abel, a 58-year-old Canadian, who headed all of the conglomerate’s non-insurance activities.
“The administrators agree on the fact that if something should happen to me this evening, it would be Greg who would take the controls tomorrow morning”, explained Mr. Buffett, Monday, May 3 on CNBC. A graduate in accounting from the University of Alberta, this ice hockey fan joined Mr. Buffett in 2008. Since 2018, he was competing with Ajit Jain, responsible for insurance activities, for the job of boss. This weekend, during the general assembly of Berkshire, the friend of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, 97, had half sold the wick: “Greg will maintain the culture” of Berkshire Hathaway (650 billion dollars in capitalization, 360,000 employees in 60 activities).
From another age
The answer to this question, in reality, is not obvious, as Warren Buffett’s capitalism seems from another age, anchored in the Reaganian revolution of the 1980s. The one who was nicknamed “the sage” or “the oracle Omaha, ”a cattle town in Nebraska on the shores of the Missouri, was one of those who shook off the dormant capitalism of the 1970s, with unprofitable conglomerates left in the hands of their managers. Buffett was the cantor of the “Shareholder value” , maximizing margins to increase return to shareholders.
You might as well invest in companies that are crushing their market, such as Coca-Cola drinks, Gillette razors or Duracell batteries. So much so that, thirty years later, Warren Buffett was accused by the Financial Times to have created a capitalism of rent, whereas the American economy effectively became more and more cartelized in all the sectors. Until the turn of the twentiethe century, Buffett did not invest in high technology, explaining that he did not understand this profession. This was true until he set his sights on Apple, the company with huge margins thanks to its iPhone.
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