America
Is Ajit Jain in two-man race to succeed Buffett?
By
Arun Kumar Washington, March 2
As Warren Buffett revealed
that someone from the Berkshire Hathaway itself would succeed him as
the company's CEO, media speculated on two likely successors -
India-born Ajit Jain and Greg Abel.
"Both the board and I believe
we now have the right person to succeed me as CEO, a successor ready to
assume the job the day after I die or step down," Buffett said in this
year's annual letter to shareholders.
But he did not reveal who
that person would be beyond saying that he would be in house. But his
partner Charles Munger dropped enough hints in his own letter Saturday.
Jain was educated in India as well as at Harvard Business School. Buffet hired him in 1986 to build a reinsurance business.
Buffett,
the Wall Street Journal recalled, once wrote to shareholders that if
Munger and his deputy Ajit Jain were ever on a sinking boat and only one
of them could be saved, "Swim to Ajit".
Now Munger, Berkshire's
vice chairman, has hinted that Jain, the 63-year-old head of the
conglomerate's reinsurance business, is part of what appears to be a
two-man race to succeed Buffett.
He also suggested that Greg Abel, who runs Berkshire's energy business, would be another worthy successor.
"Ajit
Jain and Greg Abel are proven performers who would probably be
under-described as 'world-class'," Munger wrote, adding that in some
ways, "each is a better business executive than Buffett".
Both
men appear to fit Buffett's description of the right Berkshire CEO as a
"rational, calm and decisive individual who has a broad understanding of
business and good insights into human behaviour. It's important as well
that he knows his limits," the Journal said.
Time also noted
that Jain got most mentions in Buffett's annual letter. "(Jain's) mind,
moreover, is an idea factory," Buffett writes in the letter.
But at 63, Jain may be a little too old for the job, if Buffett sticks to his prescribed age range, it said.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])