Berkshire's Greg Abel to get 19% salary bump in first year as CEO

By Amanda Cantrell

 

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chief Executive Officer Greg Abel will earn an annual cash salary of $25 million, the firm said in a filing Tuesday, far eclipsing the $100,000 that his predecessor Warren Buffett earned for decades in the role. 

 

At the $1 trillion conglomerate’s annual meeting in May, Buffett, 95, revealed that he would cede the CEO role to Abel starting in January. Buffett is still serving as chairman of the company, whose holdings span insurance companies, utilities, railroads and a stock portfolio valued at $283 billion as of Sept. 30. 

 

Abel will also be tasked with deploying the company’s $382 billion cash pile.

 

 

Abel’s new salary would be a 19 per cent increase from his $21 million salary in 2024, according to a regulatory filing. In total, he made slightly more with other compensation.

 

Buffett’s salary was unusually low for a corporate CEO, though his Berkshire stock has made him one of the richest men in the world, with a net worth of roughly $150 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

 

While Abel’s making more than Buffett, his pay package is still dwarfed by some of the moonshot incentive structures that have cropped up for tech executives in recent years. Last year, Tesla Inc. shareholders approved a $1 trillion package for Elon Musk, an agreement that spans 10 years and requires Musk to meet certain benchmarks to earn the full amount.

 

Abel, Buffett’s hand-picked successor, joined Berkshire via acquisition in 1999, when the company took a controlling stake in energy company MidAmerican. Abel became CEO of what later became Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 2008 and rose to the role of Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman in 2018, with responsibility for all of the firm’s non-insurance businesses.