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According to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, he recently chose Howard Buffett, his son, to take over as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway when he finally retires.

You might wonder why Mr. Buffett picked his son to take over as the chairman of the company. Was it preferential treatment? Was it laziness? It was neither those things. As a matter of fact, Buffett had a great reason to make this decision.

His son Howard is a philanthropist, a farmer and he’s also served on Berkshire Hathaway’s Board of Directors for the past 20 years. So, for the last two decades, he’s sat in on all of the meetings relating to the company. He was part of all of the biggest decisions. And when he takes over as chairman, he will be able to make sure the Berkshire Hathaway culture stays the same once his father is finally gone.

When something works, you should stick to it.

By putting Howard Buffett in charge, his father is showing the world that Berkshire Hathaway’s way of doing things is not going to change after he gone. Who would know how Berkshire Hathaway operates better than Warren Buffett’s own son? He’ll be able to preserve the culture of the company while helping the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate grow. That would be very difficult for an outsider to handle.

Howard Buffett received the greatest apprenticeship you could ever ask for. He was able to sit in on everything happening at Berkshire Hathaway, and he observed it all. Howard was part of the most monumental decisions regarding Berkshire Hathaway, and he made them along with his father and the Board of Directors. Some of the decisions they made were: buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, the recent acquisition of Heinz and having the foresight to invest in Goldman Sachs while the financial market was in the toilet.

How Can You Give Your Own Family an Advantage Similar to the One Buffett Provided His Son?

If you plan to achieve success, you’ll do so by putting forth a compounding effort over a period of time. That’s why it’s ideal for your children to leverage their effort and time as efficiently as possible. They need to stay focused on a specific area if they plan to become an expert in that field.

Your children will benefit tremendously, and have a serious advantage, if they learn something and know it better than everyone else. It’s important that they stay focused in one specific area where they will have a tremendous advantage over all of the others.

Think about Howard Buffett for a moment…

He’s accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge over the last 20 years while he watched his father choose investment opportunities. It’s a major advantage to learn something better than everyone else.

It takes a long time to develop the right contacts. It may even take longer to develop trust in the marketplace. Plus, it takes time to learn through experience how to hone your instincts and hunches that will provide real world value in your real life. It will also take time to learn how to work with people. Lastly, it takes time to learn how to use all of the acquired knowledge, insights and hunches and turn them into an opportunity that your experience will provide.

This is more than just a nice way of doing things.

It’s extremely important to your family’s wealth and well-being. If you have a family business, a motivated member will be a great asset. They will bring the right relationships and continuity to the family business.

If your children understand how to run the family business better than anyone else, then they would naturally be the greatest choice to take over the leadership positions within the company.

They have been already established as an expert in the company. They know how to leverage the family business and they are already a part of a trusted team.

It makes sense that family members are in the best position to make use of the advantages because they grew up around the business. They know all of the people involved. They’ll have an easier time learning the business secrets because they are proactively being taught to them.

What If Money Were No Object?

In order for this to work, your children (and their children) need to have an affinity for the family business. If they don’t love it as much as you do, or they don’t have an aptitude for it, they may want to focus their time and talent elsewhere.

Your children should focus on the things they love, as if money were no object. Because here’s what normally happens…

If you pursue a skill to the point of mastery, the money will typically tend to follow. Your kids will be motivated to work longer, spend more time in the field and really stick it out because they are passionate about it.

Having family money is a great way for children to find their passion. But you have to use the money to help them instead of hurt them. There are a lot of options available when you have family money, and it could also lead to lots of distractions. It’s important that the family members are using the money correctly; instead of using this money to harm themselves when it should help them. You wouldn’t want to see your children become spoiled brats. There’s potential to use this money to distract themselves by only choosing hobbies instead of working hard, and this could lead to feelings of sadness, bitterness and uselessness.

You never want your children to feel like they could’ve had their own success if money didn’t get in the way. When Warren Buffett’s son Howard began farming, his father purchased land for him in Tekamah, Nebraska, but he didn’t give him the land outright. He made him pay rent. Warren Buffett did not give his son a free ride. This was a good thing, because Howard is now ready to take over as chairman of one of the richest companies in the world.

If you have children working outside of the family, it’s good to have them provide progress reports in regards to their success. This is especially true if they are using family money. It’s only natural that they would keep everyone abreast of how things are going. Find out what goals they are trying to achieve. Learn about the steps they are taking in order to achieve them. Asking simple questions will keep your children on track and heading in the right direction.

It’s important that your children focus once they figure out what it is they want to do. They must do the work in order to become experts in their chosen field. It’s a great way to become confident, successful, as well as independent. It’s important that any family money being offered will help them achieve this. Don’t allow family money to turn your children away from success.

As Howard Buffett looked over a room of 700 people in Des Moines, Iowa, all there to hear him speak about the fight against world hunger, he gave the room a dose of constructive criticism.

When Buffett addressed the crowd of government officials, foreign aid association representatives and nonprofit leaders all there to help end world hunger, he said “the solution is not setting goals and campaigns, the solution is changing our mindsets.”

Howard Buffett – philanthropist, farmer, photographer, businessman and the oldest son of Warren Buffett – was the person delegated to give the keynote speech at the Iowa Hunger Summit this week. It took place at the World Food Prize event in Des Moines, Iowa.

Howard Buffett has spent many years of his life documenting the way that world hunger affects citizens of the United States of America, and all over the world. He has filmed certain situations, and written about them as well. You can learn about this information through some of the foundations that he supports and the nonprofit organizations that he runs. One such organization is known as Invest an Acre, and they encourage farmers to put aside 1 acre of land to donate the crops to their local food bank.

During his speech, Howard Buffett showed the audience a wide array of photographs. There were images of poverty, skulls, pestilence, war, emaciation, old people, young people, and dead and dying people, all to the tune of U2′s “Where the Streets Have No Name” as it played in the background.

“When I started, I thought if we could produce more, we could feed more people. I was wrong,” said Buffett, while he noted that there were lots of reasons why hunger still existed. Some of the issues were related to climate, transportation, and politics. All of these issues prevent people from getting the food that they need to survive.

Buffett also reminded us that there is need for a number of groups to start working on all of the problems previously mentioned. Many of the philanthropic organizations today started a long time ago, and their missions were “written before cellphones, before the Internet.”

Another issue with nonprofits is that they are actually afraid to solve the problem that they set out to fix. Why you ask? Because they know solving the problem will actually put a lot of people out of jobs.

“It’s not an indictment of you,” he said. “It’s an indictment of the system.”

During his speech, he recommends that foundations and nonprofit organizations issue a date of destruction of 40 years. He learned this deadline as a young farmer when he was taught that farmers have about 40 chances to get it right.

“What if every NGO (nongovernmental organization) set themselves up for 40 years? If we are really as good as we want to be, this approach will change our thinking and policy.”

Also during the Iowa Hunger Summit, AARP Foundation Director JoAnn Jenkins gave a speech about the challenge of food insecurity for the elderly in the United States.

To put it simply, food insecurity is not knowing whether or not you will have food available to you within a 24-hour period.

Jenkins also mentioned that it’s a “time of great anxiety and uncertainty” for the part of the population that is aging in the United States. For people 50 years of age or older, the unemployment rate has doubled, and the average Social Security payment is only $1200 per month.

Jenkins also said that older Americans are facing issues with isolation, unemployment and housing right now. She strongly encouraged the people in the audience to reach out to those older Americans, and let them know about certain resources such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps the American people put more food on their table.

“It is a sad irony that even as the world becomes more interconnected, people 50-plus feel more disconnected,” said Jenkins.

Warren Buffett’s children are well at work helping him give away a good portion of his $47 billion fortune. Their approach to donating this money is very similar to the way their father made all of that money to begin with.

Just like Buffett himself, each of his children have a tiny staff to work with. And they only appear to donate the money to very specific projects that they understand, and this is just like how their father buys stocks and businesses.

One thing is for certain. Warren Buffett has no say in the way that Peter, Howard and Susie’s foundations will use the $2.6 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock that they will receive. But it is very evident that his children have seemed to absorb Warren’s personal philosophy.

“I think the only pressure I feel from him is making sure we’re smart about how we spend the money,” noted Howard Buffett. “He’s had no influence on where we give money, but he’s had a big influence on how we go about it.”

It’s important to note that Warren Buffett’s children have focused on many different outlets for their charities, and this is very reflective of their personal interests.

Howard Buffett has made the effort of helping farmers in nations that are impoverished, by giving them the ability to produce more in an effort to reduce world hunger. Susie Buffett is trying to help reduce teen pregnancy, and she is also looking to strengthen the early education of children. Lastly, Peter Buffett is making an effort to empower girls and women through quality education, as well as economic development, collaboration and a desire to put an end to violence against women.

“We’re given this amazing opportunity to try and make change where we can,” said Peter Buffett. “And being our father’s children, we don’t think small.”

Each of the Buffett children has been running different foundations set up by their parents since the late 1990s. But they were capable of increasing their giving in a dramatic way once 2006 hit, and their father made the announcement of his overall plan of philanthropy. Each of his children received their first $65 million worth of stock at this time to use toward their philanthropic endeavors.

The Buffett children better be prepared to do some more giving, because the annual gift of the Berkshire Hathaway stock that they receive will roughly go to about $100 million-$125 million for each child as of next summer.

The overall amount that each children’s foundations will receive in Berkshire Hathaway stock is going to be about $2.6 billion. But it must be noted that any charitable work that they do is very much overshadowed by the pledge that their father gave to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He’s going to give them stock worth nearly $44 billion.

The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is the foundation created by Warren Buffett’s first wife, who passed away in 2004, will receive nearly $4.4 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock. The charitable organization is known to try and minimize the spread of nuclear weapons, and it also promotes the reproductive health in women.

All of the Buffett children are very happy that their father continuously encouraged them to take risks. This gives them the ability to tackle important issues without being afraid to do so. They also mentioned that they were happy that their parents took it upon themselves to set up each child with their own separate Foundation, because this gives them the ability to go their own way and support the programs that they like the most.

It’s not uncommon for Howard Buffett to travel to many of the poverty-stricken areas around the world, where he speaks with farmers and also has the ability to overlook the different projects that his foundation is funding. He often refuses to tell his father exactly where he’s going when he makes these trips, because the 57 year old son of the Oracle of Omaha doesn’t want his father worrying about him while he travels to some of these dangerous destinations. An example would be the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Howard Buffett makes it a point to take a close look at the challenges of the many farmers that he tries to help, since he can relate to them because he is a farmer of soybeans and corn in the state of Illinois. This reminds him of his mother, who always made it a point to try and help everyone in need that she came across.

“It’s very hard for me to walk into those circumstances and not try to do something,” Howard said.

Howard Buffett also makes an effort to focus his giving in a way that will allow the recipients to continue on once his grant money is no longer available. He does not try to bring expensive projects like irrigation and hybrid seeds into areas where the farmers will not eventually be able to afford them on their own.

Warren Buffett actually manages one of the world’s largest conglomerates, and he does it with a very tiny staff of only two dozen people at their headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Peter, Howard and Susie each only have a staff of half that amount for the foundations that they currently run.

Peter Buffett also mentions that the Buffett children follow the same beliefs as their father, and like to limit their charitable giving to areas that they understand. This is very similar to the way that their father invests.

“You want to be as focused on an end goal as you can be,” said Peter Buffett. “In a very practical way, it helps to say no.”

Peter Buffett is a composer and a musician, but his charitable passion is helping girls and women throughout the world in a variety of different ways. It’s his hope that the girls in impoverished areas will gain access to better educational resources, and because of this they will be able to participate more in their community and become more responsible decision-makers.

The NoVo Foundation run by Peter Buffett also supports programs in the US schools which teach kids the right kind of emotional and social skills that they need, as well as sound decision-making skills.

Susie Buffett is very happy to try and solve some of the human problems that can get quite messy, that are also very difficult to solve. This is very similar to what her mom did.

“That comes directly from my childhood. It is what I watched my mother do,” said the 59 year old Susie Buffett. “She had me in the car with her at a very early age in the housing projects and deep in the community. She was very involved personally. It was not a check writing thing. It was her being there.”

Susie Buffett has been very interested in education throughout her life, but she chose to focus the money that her foundation gave to education in early childhood. She made this decision because she asked the superintendent of schools in Omaha where she would be able to make the biggest difference.

Since Susie Buffett is currently the only child of Warren Buffett living in Omaha, she also decided to put her Sherwood Foundation funds to work with other nonprofits in Omaha. This is a great effort to help make the city a better place, and also help the low-income neighborhoods as well.

It’s good to know that Warren Buffett supports the work of his children, and he’s proved that by increasing the amount of money he is going to give each of their foundations. He also regularly praises their philanthropy.

“Everything has impressed me,” said Buffett. “They’re each doing things they have a special interest in which they have some special abilities too. And they work very hard at it.”

Warren Buffett recently mentioned that he is finally done with all of the radiation treatments that he was getting for his prostate cancer. He is actually very eager to return to work now that this situation is through.

Warren Buffett, who is the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, just broke the news to us this past Friday while he was talking to one of the groups of executives from a newspaper that Berkshire Hathaway owns. “It’s a great day for me. Today I had my 44th and the last day of radiation,” he said. We learned this from the Omaha World-Herald, which is one of the newspapers that he owns.

Warren Buffett actually told us in April that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. During this time, he told the world that his disease was not life-threatening at all because it was detected very early so they would be able to treat it quickly and promptly.

Any time you discuss the health of Warren Buffett, you immediately begin to question just how long he’s going to be able to continue running Berkshire Hathaway. He actually turned 82 years old just three weeks ago. What did he do to celebrate his birthday? He gave away more of his $44 billion, and this time he gave some of it to his children so that they can help their personal charitable foundations.

When Warren Buffett’s birthday gifts reached the media, he mentioned that he was feeling good and that his decision to give away more money didn’t actually have anything to do with his current health situation. He just wanted to reward his children for the great progress that they were making with their foundations. Their charities help farmers living in impoverished nations, and they also help to prevent violence happening to women. As I’m sure you know already, Warren Buffett has pledged to actually give away the majority of the fortune that he’s earned over the years.

He has also provided some of the Berkshire Hathaway succession plans so far, but not all of them. One thing he mentioned during February is that the CEO has been decided, but he will not tell the public who it is. He also hired two hedge fund managers to handle all of the investments within the larger Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

Finally, it is also widely known that Warren Buffett wants his oldest son Howard to take over the company as nonexecutive chairman.

Berkshire Hathaway experienced really good news this week during Warren Buffett’s birthday because the current investors are happy because they can celebrate the fact that they have one more year of leadership from the Oracle of Omaha. Unfortunately, this milestone also put into the mind of investors that there will be somebody else running the company very soon once Warren finally retires.

Berkshire Hathaway actually consists of more than 80 businesses at this point in time, and fortunately they are all moving along and doing very well. These businesses even posted $3 billion in profit during the past quarter. They current Class A stock of Berkshire Hathaway is worth over $127,000 per share, and it’s nearly 3 dollars away from breaking its 52-week high which it previously set in the early part of August. This means there are a lot of good things that the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway should very well celebrate.

But Warren Buffett also turned 82 years old this past Thursday, and he is advancing in age and he also had prostate cancer treatment during the summer. So this obviously reminds us that he is not immortal and he will eventually resign from his post. The good thing right now is that Mr. Buffett said that his cancer is not life-threatening, and he also feels really good at the moment. So that is a definite positive sign.

The succession plan for Berkshire Hathaway is already in place, and Warren Buffett made sure to tell his investors that there is a person chosen to take the helm of Berkshire Hathaway, and there are also two backup candidates available as well. Warren Buffett chose not to tell anybody who the next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is going to be. At this time, he is both the CEO and chairman of Berkshire.

It is also true that Mr. Buffett does not plan on stepping down from his post at anytime soon, because he enjoys the wheeling and dealing so much that he doesn’t want to give it up just yet. And that’s regardless of the fact that he hasn’t bought a large company like a Lubrizol for $9 billion in quite a while. It’s actually been over a year.

The main thing we need to be aware of is that the successor to Warren Buffett will inherit a very large conglomerate that only gets more complicated with each new business acquisition. Berkshire Hathaway does not rely too heavily on insurance companies any longer, and it is being recognized more and more for its manufacturing companies, utility companies and its railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

“The insurance is increasingly more of an engine that runs in the background instead of the driver of the business,” stated Jeff Matthews, who is the author of “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business and Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett.”

Buffett was requested to do an interview for this story, but he chose not to respond.

Berkshire Hathaway released their second quarter earnings report earlier in August, and it clearly showed us that more than half of the profits from this company come from mundane businesses like BNSF Railroad, Lubrizol, and their electric utility company MidAmerican Energy. And let’s not forget about their tool companies and manufacturing businesses.

This type of business trend has been evolving and getting stronger, and this is particularly so since Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad during 2010, but it’s even more transparent at this point since he picked up Lubrizol about a year ago.

“Even in the best of operating environments, the insurance side of the business would never out-earn the non-insurance side ever again,” stated David Rolfe who is the CEO of Wedgewood Partners. Berkshire Hathaway is actually the firm’s second-biggest investment.

The way Berkshire Hathaway now mixes up its businesses actually makes this a more attractive offer for those investors who weren’t too fond of the world of reinsurance and insurance because it’s kind of complicated. But the overall nature of Berkshire Hathaway isn’t going to change according to analysts, regardless of where the profit of this business comes from.

Author and stockbroker Andy Kilpatrick said “He’s got diversity. Rather than just a stock company or an insurance company, it’s an operating company.”

Kilpatrick also stated that he does not believe the company’s nature changed at all since Berkshire Hathaway is known to add more acquisitions onto their existing business structure, and they really don’t make any effort at all to integrate them.

Kilpatrick, author of “Of Permanent Value: the Story of Warren Buffett,” also said that “It’s not a simple company. It’s a complicated company, but it’s a successful company.”

The insurance and reinsurance companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which obviously include Geico, are one of the main driving factors of the profits for this company and they still are. The insurance companies currently generate $71.1 billion in float, which Berkshire Hathaway is able to invest during the time between customers buying their policies and then filing claims.

It doesn’t matter how big the insurance companies are at Berkshire Hathaway, because they are always going to be one of the mainstays of this company since there is risk involved when their reinsurance division writes some of their big policies.

As an example, during one deal that took place during 2006, Berkshire Hathaway made an agreement to cover up to $13.9 billion of asbestos claims, and they received $7.12 billion for this deal. Also, Warren Buffett also insured derivative contracts which could potentially create multibillion-dollar losses if the pricing was wrong. Warren Buffett actually believes that both of these deals will eventually end up profitable.

According to Matthews, the insurance divisions are definitely the riskiest part of Berkshire Hathaway and their business, and the replacement of Warren Buffett clearly needs to understand insure if the company is going to thrive when he retires.

Matthews said “If you do a bad job at the railroad, your earnings might get hurt, but the railroad is not going away. If you do a bad job in insurance, your whole company can go away.”

The current plan of Berkshire Hathaway is to split Warren Buffett’s job in three different pieces once he retires. The CEO that they hire is going to run Berkshire Hathaway, but two people that Warren recently hired over the last few years are going to oversee the investments. Warren Buffett also wants his oldest son Howard to succeed him as the company’s chairman.

The one thing that this shift in the business of Berkshire Hathaway has brought about is that the earnings of the company are a lot less volatile now, and the results of operating companies like Iscar tools and Acme brick are going to drive these results into the future.

But we don’t know if this mix is going to dramatically change now that Warren Buffett has about $41 billion worth of cash on hand to make another large acquisition if he chooses to do so.

Kilpatrick said that “At any moment, he could buy some other insurance thing and that could look big again.”

Berkshire Hathaway has subsidiaries besides manufacturing and insurance, and they are in the areas of ice cream, jewelry companies, private jet companies, furniture businesses and clothing companies. The major investments of Berkshire Hathaway are Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo & Company and IBM.

Coca-Cola shareholders just approved a two-for-one stock split this past Tuesday, and this is going to increase the number of shares available to 11.2 billion. The company has not split their stock in 16 years, and it’s only the 11th time that they have done this throughout their 92 year history on the stock market.

Coca-Cola recently stated in their company release that “[t]he record date for the stock split is expected to be July 27, 2012, with new shares expected to be distributed on or about Aug. 10, 2012. Each shareowner of record on the close of business on the record date will receive one additional share of common stock for each share held.”

The one investor who might find himself a little bit annoyed with the two-for-one split is none other than Warren Buffett. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, already has a grand total of 200 million shares of Coca-Cola that total in worth of over $15 billion. They’re actually the largest holding of Berkshire Hathaway, and it is widely known that Berkshire owns a total of 8.84% of Coca-Cola. This fact was recently reported by CNBC.

Buffett, when speaking about his confidence in the Coca-Cola company, told CNBC, “I’ve had a relationship with Coke for over 70 years. . .Today we own 200 million shares. We’ve never sold a share of Coca-Cola.”

Many people are wondering if Berkshire Hathaway will finally sell off some of their shares of Coke now that the stock is going to split. It’s common knowledge that Buffett has always been a strong detractor of stock splits because he feels that they are bad for the investors. The reason why is because he says they will dilute the power of the shareholders, and he also believes that stock splits will also attract investors who are only there for a short term gain. Buffett mainly likes his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders to look at their stock in the company as a business owner, and who are willing to invest in their company for the long-term.

In a 1983 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, him Mr. Buffett wrote: “Could we really improve our shareholder group by trading some of present clear-thinking members for impressionable new ones who, preferring paper to value, feel wealthier with nine $10 bills than with one $100 bill?”

Buffett was actually a member of Coca-Cola’s board during three of the stock splits. He even split his Berkshire Hathaway B shares 50 to 1 in the year 2010. He did that because his split encouraged Burlington North investors to convert their current holdings a lot more into Berkshire Hathaway shares. There is an article in Bloomberg where Howard Buffett commented on his father’s opinion of stock splits, stating that his father has “one opinion about how Berkshire should handle a stock split and another about how Coke would handle it.”

Buffett also wrote about Coca-Cola in his letter to the shareholders in 2010. He said that “In 2011, we will almost certainly receive $376 million from Coke, up $24 million from last year. Within ten years, I would expect that $376 million to double.”

Coca-Cola shares, at the time of this writing, were trading for $78.12. This is up 0.18% from Monday’s close of the market.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which is the investment company run by none other than Warren Buffett, happens to also be the biggest investor in Wells Fargo and Company which is ticker symbol WFC. It is also a large holder of Bank of America Corp. preferred shares which is ticker symbol BAC. Berkshire Hathaway’s stock has reached a 13 month high this afternoon, and it hits this level because the major lenders made a big rally today.

The Class A shares of Berkshire went up about 1% on the day when the closing bell rang at 4 PM. The current shares are valued at $124,440. This is the highest price the shares have reached since April 2011. Wells Fargo made a 1.5% gain in share price today, and Bank of America gained 4.5% which is the main reason why Berkshire was able to reach their 13 month high.

To quote Warren Buffett, he mentioned last month that the US banks have “liquidity coming out of their ears” and he also commented that the US banks are also in much better shape than their European rivals. If you don’t know this already, the European banks are also struggling with a major debt crisis at this point in time.

Berkshire Hathaway, based out of Omaha, Nebraska, has been adding to their holdings of Wells Fargo since they literally opened the position four years ago, and they have been adding more shares even more recently. They’ve also invested $5 billion into Bank of America Corp., and they were granted warrants and preferred shares as part of their investment.

Tom Lewandowski, who is an analyst for Edward Jones and Co. based out of St. Louis, said that Berkshire gets a “bump when you see risk rally” for their financial holdings. He also stated in a phone interview that the investors “who can deal with the succession risk that comes along with Warren Buffett in owning Berkshire shares, I think it’s still a good long-term investment opportunity.”

Warren Buffett is the person who built Berkshire Hathaway and did so by taking over a failing textile maker which he then turned into a company worth $200 billion. This company sells a wide variety of products which range all away from ice cream to insurance.

He is actually in the process of preparing for his eventual retirement. It is said that his son Howard, who is also a Berkshire director, will be guarding the company as a non-executive chairman. This is going to take place as the Board of Directors makes their final decision on the successor CEO as well as two back up candidates. The company has not publicly identified any of the potential candidates just yet.