Why Warren Buffett matters beyond Wall Street

OMAHA, Neb. — Raven Connelly flew from London. Katherine Schaaf took Amtrak from San Francisco. And Bill and Carol Thatcher drove several hours from Fort Dodge, Iowa — population 26,000.

They were just a few of the tens of thousands of people who descended on Omaha last weekend to pay tribute to the billionaire investor Warren Buffett — and, it turned out, to witness his retirement announcement on Saturday.

“One of the great pleasures in this business is having people trust you,” Buffett told his rapt audience during a lengthy Q&A, hours before announcing his retirement: “Why [else] work at 90, when you’ve got more money than anybody could count?”

At age 94, the “Oracle of Omaha” has earned that trust — along with returns for his shareholders. He’s one of the giants of American capitalism, in part for making common-sense “value” investing accessible to people outside Wall Street.

Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, when it was a struggling textile mill. Sixty years later, he has turned it into one of the world’s largest companies, operating businesses ranging from insurance and railroads to Dairy Queen and Duracell batteries. Its success has made Buffett, now worth some $162 billion according to Bloomberg, one of the wealthiest people in the world.

He also seems to be one of the most well-liked — at least according to his loyal shareholders. They come from all over the world to attend the annual Berkshire Hathaway party nicknamed Woodstock for Capitalists.

Buffett’s Q&A session, where he answers shareholder questions for hours, is the centerpiece.

“It’s spiritual and morally uplifting,” said Rosalyn Trumm of Omaha, who has been attending the annual meeting since 1995. “I think it’s remarkable to hear Warren talk about what business and society and values should be.”

That sort of devotion is a remarkable accomplishment today, especially considering the widespread public distrust of many other billionaires. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is wielding unprecedented political power in the United States as a close adviser to President Trump — and becoming widely unpopular for it.

Buffett “is a capitalist, but he’s also a responsible citizen and a decent human being,” says analyst Cathy Seifert, who covers Berkshire for CFRA Research.

“When the general public bashes billionaires,” she adds, “I don’t think they’re bashing Buffett.”

Buffett is famously humble. He’s also very media savvy

Buffett’s decision to retire as CEO was both surprising and not. He has spent years preparing Berkshire for life after him, and in 2021 he publicly designated Vice Chairman Greg Abel as his eventual successor. In 2023, Buffett also lost his longtime business partner and close friend, Charlie Munger, who died at age 99.

Yet his news still stunned the crowd on Saturday. Perhaps it was meant to: Buffett had at that point answered shareholder questions for almost five hours, while flanked onstage by Abel and his beloved cans of Coca-Cola.

Buffett had started the day by promising shareholders that his 60th annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting would be “the biggest, and I think it’ll be the best yet.”

And then, with under five minutes left in his promised speaking time, he revealed his news with a flourish. “The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” he declared — later adding that the news was also a surprise to Abel himself.

The delivery was pure Buffett: both media savvy and relatably human.

The billionaire is famous for his humility, as oxymoronic as that sounds. He has lived in the same five-bedroom house since 1958, and he claims to subsist on Coke, See’s Candies and McDonald’s drive-through.

Buffett has also spent decades giving away his fortune and publicly encouraging other billionaires to do the same, including through the Giving Pledge, which he started with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.

Just this week, Bill Gates said that he wants to “give away virtually all my wealth” in the next 20 years. He also called Buffett “one of my biggest influences … who remains the ultimate model of generosity.”

But Buffett has also been very deliberate about marketing himself as a folksy, humble Midwesterner. During this gigantic three-day party he throws in his own honor every year, his hours of televised commentary are the main event. He has a close relationship with business-news channel CNBC, which set up an entire pavilion in this year’s exhibit hall to cover the weekend. And he draws both shareholders and journalists from around the world, to hang on his every word.

So Buffett has been extremely shrewd about both wielding his billionaire bully pulpit and crafting his public image. And he’s not fully relinquishing either, despite his planned retirement as CEO: This week, the company said that Buffett would remain chairman.

When asked why they traveled to Omaha last weekend, several Berkshire shareholders brought up the contrast between Buffett and the current generation of high-profile billionaires.

“Even with the money that he has, he knows how to give back to the world. And you don’t see that with people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos,” said Jeff Pollak, a Berkshire shareholder who traveled from Orange County, Calif., for the weekend.

Around the corner from the arena hosting the festival, a local shop was selling T-shirts, coffee mugs and records. Most of the slogans embossed on its products were decidedly progressive, including critiques of Trump and Musk. Yet one T-shirt on prominent display crowed that “the nicest billionaire lives in Omaha.”

A sign next to the shirts made the connection to another famously nice billionaire who also works hard to control her own image: “Warren Buffett: The Taylor Swift of the stock market,” it declared.

Nebraska Public Media’s Arthur Jones contributed reporting.