Heirs

Warren Buffett Picks His Successor

Todd Combs set to take over Berkshire Hathaway.

Billionaire Warren Buffett has chosen an obscure hedge-fund manager to take over Berkshire Hathaway, should he decide to step down. His successor, Todd Combs, comes from a small hedge fund in Connecticut. Combs will now be controlling a $100 billion portfolio—leaps and bounds larger than the $400 million he controlled as the head of Castle Point Capital. Buffett’s successor will be a two-part job—a CEO and the now-filled CIO—but there were several other candidates in the running, including Li Lu, a Chinese-American hedge-fund manager, who removed himself from the running. Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, earns $100,000 in salary, which might be cause for Lu bowing out. For now, Combs will be phased into his new role, overseeing a portfolio that Buffett says he "feels comfortable with" and "scale up until he has a chance to get fully invested."