Berkshire Hathaway has hired a second hedge fund manager to help run the company’s investment portfolio and prepare for what it described as the eventual retirement of 81-year-old billionaire Berkshire chief executive and chairman Warren Buffett.
Berkshire said on Monday that Ted Weschler would join the Omaha-based company early next year. The 50-year-old has announced to the partners of his hedge fund, Peninsula Capital Advisors, that he would begin winding up the fund so he could join Berkshire.
The announcement helps clarify the investment part of Berkshire’s succession plan, but because the company plans to split Buffett’s job into separate chief executive, chairman and investment manager jobs, it is still not clear who will lead Berkshire after Buffett is gone.
Weschler founded Peninsula Capital in 1999, and is a managing partner of the firm, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. The hedge fund makes investments in publicly traded companies. Peninsula Capital held a concentrated portfolio of nine stocks as of June 30 that was worth nearly US$2 billion, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Berkshire has said that the board has a list of four internal candidates to replace Buffett as chief executive, but Buffett has always refused to name them.
Berkshire said Buffett would continue to manage most of the company’s investments “until his retirement.”
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Meyer Shields said he believed the use of the word retirement may be significant because previously Buffett had suggested he would continue working until he either became incapacitated or died.
“The word retirement seems sort of jarring to us,” Shields said.
Andy Kilpatrick, the stockbroker-author of Of Permanent Value, the Story of Warren Buffett, said it was unusual for Berkshire or Buffett to use the word retirement, but he did not expect imminent change at the company and said Weschler’s hiring helped clarify the succession plan a bit.
“I think that should give some relief to people who are wondering what’s going to happen,” Kilpatrick said.
Buffett did not immediately respond to a request for an interview on Monday.
Weschler’s hiring comes after Berkshire last fall named Todd Combs to help run a portfolio of about US$1 billion to US$3 billion of investments. Weschler will also run a segment, but Monday’s release did not specify the size of the portfolio he would run.
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