Washington: The well -known billionaire investor Warren Buffett has announced that he is retiring from leading Berkshire Hathaway by the end of the year. He has recommended Greg Abel as his successor to take over as CEO.

Buffett’s success combined with his ability to explain his thinking in clear sound bitter has made him very influential in business and financial communities and earned him the nickname “Oracle of Omaha.”

Several years ago, Buffett had already stated that the 62-year-old Abel would be his choice for successor in an interview with CNBC.

“The time has arrived where Greg was to become CEO of the company at the end of the year,” Buffett, 94, told an annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Midwestern City, where Berkshire Hathaway is based.

Buffett said he thought the board would be “unanimous in favor of” his recommendation.

“I would still hang around and could be useful in a few cases, but the last word would be what Greg said in operations, in capital development, whatever it may be,” he added.

Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a medium -sized textile company when he bought it in the 1960s into a giant conglomerate, now appreciated for more than $ 1 trillion and with liquid assets of $ 300 billion.

The company on Saturday reported the profit in the first quarter of $ 9.6 billion, down 14 percent. It works for $ 4.47 per Share, also down sharply.

Buffett’s net worth of Saturday was $ 168.2 billion, according to Forbes Magazine’s real -time list.

“I have no intentions – zero – selling a proportion of Berkshire Hathaway. I will eventually give it away,” Buffett told the shareholders who responded with a standing ovation.

“The decision to keep every share is a financial decision because I think the prospects for Berkshire will be better under Greg’s leadership than mine.”

Abel, a long -lasting core figure of Berkshire, joined the Business Group in the Energy Division in 1992 and has been on the board since 2018.

“So that’s the news hull for the day,” Buffett said.

Trade ‘should not be a weapon’

Buffett used the stage to declare earlier that “trade should not be a weapon”, in remarks that were clearly targeting US President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of duty against countries around the world.

“There is no doubt that trade can be an act of war,” he said without name Trump by name.

These comments came when analysts in the United States and abroad have expressed growing concern that tariffs could seriously slow down global growth.

Two months ago, Buffett told a CBS interviewer that Customs “is a tax on goods”-and not a relatively painless revenue raiser that Trump has suggested: “I mean, Tooth Fairy doesn’t pay them!”

On Saturday, Buffett Washington urged to continue shopping with the rest of the world and said, “We should do what we do best and they should do what they do best. That’s what we did.”

Achieving prosperity is not a zero-sum game, with a country’s successes meaning someone else’s loss, he said. Both can bloom.

“I think the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won’t be at our expense. The more prosperous we become and the safer we will feel,” Buffett said.

He added that it can be dangerous for a country to offend the rest of the world while claiming superiority.

“In my opinion, it’s a big mistake when you have seven and a half billion people who don’t like you very well, and you have 300 million who somehow crows about how well they have done it,” Buffett told the shareholders.

Compared to the dynamics, he said, the financial markets are ‘recent gyrations’ really nothing.’