Andrew Bary

One of the unknowns about Berkshire Hathaway when Greg Abel takes over as CEO at the start of 2026 is the role that will be played by investment managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Weschler and Combs have run about 10% of Berkshire's $300 billion equity portfolio for more than a decade with CEO Warren Buffett handling the other 90%.

They operate independently of Buffett, and each other, and are believed to account for many of the smaller Berkshire equity investments, including DaVita, Liberty Sirius XM Holdings, VeriSign, Amazon.com, Charter Communications, Visa, Mastercard, and Constellation Brands. Berkshire doesn't disclose and Buffett generally doesn't discuss which positions are his and which are overseen by Weschler and Combs.

Buffett didn't address the role of Combs, 54, and Weschler, 62, with the portfolio when he made his surprise announcement at Berkshire's annual meeting that Berkshire executive Abel would become CEO after year-end. They have been largely invisible publicly. They rarely give media interviews and aren't on stage with Buffett at the annual meeting.

Berkshire didn't respond to a request for comment about their role.

Investor Bill Smead of the Smead Value fund has argued that Berkshire should have elevated the pair to "prominent stock-picking positions" in conjunction with the Abel news given the importance of the portfolio.

It has been a critical source of value creation over Buffett's 60 years at the helm, given Berkshire's scores in Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express, Moody's and many other stocks over the decades.

Whoever has portfolio management responsibility could invest a lot given that Berkshire is sitting on about $335 billion in cash and as Buffett repeatedly has said, buying stocks is easier than purchasing whole businesses. Buffett, Combs and Weschler have collectively found little to buy in the stock market in recent quarters.

Last year, Berkshire bought just $9 billion of stocks and about $3 billion in the first quarter. Sales vastly outweighed purchases, including sales of more than $100 billion of Apple stock.

Whoever runs the portfolio probably will do more buying than selling since some of Berkshire's largest holdings probably are untouchable now, including longstanding stakes in Coca-Cola and American Express.

Many Berkshire watchers assumed that Combs and Weschler would oversee the entire portfolio when Buffett gave up the CEO job and report to the new CEO.

But Buffett may have other ideas. At Berkshire's annual meeting last year, he said that decision would be up to the Berkshire board.

"But I would say that if I were on that board and were making the decision, I would probably, knowing Greg, I would just leave...I would leave the capital allocation to Greg. And he understands businesses extremely well. And if you understand businesses, you understand common stocks. If you really know how business works, you are an investment manager."

It would be a big job -- and arguably unfeasible -- for Abel to run Berkshire's dozens of operating businesses and make stock picks.

Abel is a more hands-on manager than Buffett, who loves the investment game. Buffett has long enjoyed combing through corporate 10-K and 10-Q to find attractive stocks and identifying opportunities in unexpected places, such the five Japanese trading companies in which Berkshire now owns about $24 billion of stock.

Buffett praised Abel in his annual shareholder letter earlier this year, writing: "Often, nothing looks compelling; very infrequently we find ourselves knee-deep in opportunities. Greg has vividly shown his ability to act at such times as did Charlie," a reference to former Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger who died at 99 in 2023. Buffett however didn't mention any specific Abel investments.

Combs' role with the portfolio is part-time since he has been CEO of Berkshire's Geico unit for five years and had a full plate there overseeing its turnaround and an upgrade of antiquated technology. Combs is also on the board of JPMorgan Chase. Now that Geico is highly profitable and has made tech upgrades, it's possible that Combs will leave Geico -- a role that Buffett initially stated likely would be a short stint.

If Combs leaves Geico, he would have more time for Berkshire investments.

Buffett hasn't commented on the investment performance of the two managers in recent years, although it's believed that they are behind the S&P 500 since joining Berkshire due in part to an underweighting in the big technology stock that have led the market and losing stocks like Sirius XM Holdings and Charter.

Buffett commented in 2019 that they were each slightly behind the stock market since joining Berkshire in what may have been his last public statement on their performance.

One question is whether a wealthy Weschler will stick around under the Abel regime. Weschler's score with his IRA that touched $264 million in value a few years ago was written up by Barron's columnist Allan Sloan while at the Washington Post.

The management of the Berkshire equity portfolio is a big part of the company's secret sauce so it will be of keen interest to investors who will be calling the shots in the Abel era.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

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May 07, 2025 00:01 ET (04:01 GMT)

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