Warren Buffett is days away from stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, but at age 95, he’s skipping retirement to stay on as chairman. That’s not a shock from the investor who “tap dances to work.”
After revealing his resignation plans to Berkshire shareholders in May, Buffett said he would “still hang around” and “could conceivably be useful” to his successor, Greg Abel.
“I’m not going to sit at home and watch soap operas,” Buffett told The Wall Street Journal after his big reveal. “My interests are still the same.”
In his Thanksgiving letter, Buffett said he still works at Berkshire’s Omaha headquarters five days a week, and sometimes has a “useful idea” or gets approached with an offer.
Buffett’s lasting dedication isn’t surprising, as he’s famously devoted to Berkshire. Since taking control in 1965, he has transformed it from a failing textile mill into a world-beating conglomerate that owns scores of businesses such as Geico and NetJets, and huge stakes in public companies including Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz.
“We’ve got the best job in the world,” Buffett said about himself and the late Charlie Munger during Berkshire’s annual meeting in 2000. “We get to work with people we like and admire and trust every day of the year. We get to do what we want to do, the way we want to do it.”
Investing Berkshire’s capital inside and outside the company is the “most enjoyable thing to do in the world,” Buffett said during the 2012 meeting. “I get to paint my own painting,” he continued, adding that he has “a lot of fun” with his coworkers.
Buffett has said for decades that retirement doesn’t appeal to him, and he much prefers to keep working as long as possible.
“Berkshire is my first love and one that will never fade,” he wrote in his 1991 shareholder letter, recalling that when a student asked when he planned to retire, he replied: “About five to 10 years after I die.”
Buffett said during Berkshire’s 1996 meeting that the idea of retiring was “unthinkable” for him: “That would be the worst. I think death would be second.”
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