About Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said at the company’s 2026 annual shareholder meeting that the transition of CEO duties to Greg Abel is “all working” and that Abel is “doing everything I did and then some.” Buffett described the current environment for deploying Berkshire’s cash as “not ideal,” noting that the company has roughly $380 billion in cash on hand. He characterized much of today’s market activity as “gambling,” comparing the markets to “a church with a casino attached” and stating that “the casino’s gotten very attractive to people.” He said that buying one-day options is “not investing” and “not speculating,” but “gambling.”
Buffett also reflected on Berkshire’s $35 billion investment in Apple, which he said has grown to about $185 billion pre-tax over ten years. He praised Tim Cook’s leadership, saying Cook “succeeded a legend” in Steve Jobs and calling Cook’s record “one of the miracles of American business management.” In a separate interview, Buffett said his message to shareholders and partners is to follow the golden rule: “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” He added that he has not learned new industries in recent years and that he understands fewer businesses as a percentage of the whole than he did a decade ago.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Warren Buffett's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Jonathan0:01
Duracell's 82 million dollars of pre-tax profits in 2017 were still well below what it earned as a subsidiary of PG. Can you clarify or quantify to what extent transition costs or purchase price accounting impacts at the segment level were still temporarily a burden last year, or is it possible that the gap in earnings contribution simply reflects the commoditization of the category given the entry of Amazon into the battery market? I did see that Duracell's earnings were up in the first quarter. Is that a sign of a more meaningful contribution in 2018 and beyond as you finish right-sizing the manufacturing footprint and acquisition-related charges fall away?
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Warren Buffett0:44
Yeah, Duracell should be earning more money than it is now and will be. And as you mentioned, it's well on its way there, but it's not earning an appropriate amount now based on the history of the company. I was around when I was on the board of Gillette when Gillette bought Duracell, and I've seen what it does when it isn't managed to its full extent. I saw what Jim Kiltz did with it and Gillette when he ran it. There were a lot more transition problems in the purchase. For one thing, there are a lot of rules connected with our swap of our stock and P&G for Duracell. There are a lot of things that you cannot do that made sense to do in that period of transition from P&G's management to ours. But Duracell the brand is strong, very strong. The product line is very strong. So we are making more money, and we should, and I believe we will earn really what the property is capable of earning. We should be earning that relatively soon. But you're absolutely right that from a profit standpoint it is underperforming. We're making a lot of changes, and some of those are involved in jurisdictions or countries where it is really expensive to change in terms of employment payments that have to be made if a plant is changed or something of the sort. But I like the Duracell deal absolutely as well as when we made it. Charlie, I like it better than you do now. Duracell is a very, very... it's our kind of business.
