Emmet

He's going to be far more direct with the businesses.

Buffett kind of tolerated certain things out of loyalty, but I know Abel won't be giving them this kind of forever pass.

So he did, before I kind of shut up and we wait and see what happens on Saturday, there are three moves that stand out.

in abel's first four months as ceo first on his first day as ceo on the 2nd of january he closed berkshire's 9.7 billion acquisition of oxychem occidental's chemistry subsidiary second on the 4th of march berkshire resumed share buybacks for the first time since may 2024 and they were repurchased about 226 million of stock which by breakfast

wealth pile isn't huge, but it does signal that a current, I mean, Abel just clearly sees Berkshire itself as a buy and would not deploy a quarter of a billion in cash if he thought it was anything but that.

And then the third thing, and the most interesting of all, if you ask me, is he personally invested his entire 15.3 million after tax 2026 salary into Berkshire class A stock.

And then at a corporate level,

he pumped $1.8 billion into Japan's Tokyo Marine, taking total Japanese equity exposure above $46 billion.

And as I recall, at the time, headline writers were saying something like, Buffett's successor places his big first bet, and it isn't on America.

But I think that totally overstated it.

Abel is not bearish on the US.

He's doing what Buffett taught him to do, which is looking where the prices are dislocated and right...

Now, or at least at that point, this location was in Tokyo as opposed to Wall Street.

Hear, hear.

So this weekend will make for an interesting one.

I'm sure I know loads of people going.

I usually get text messages from plenty of people who are there.

So I never made the pilgrimage, alas, when Warren was with us.

So there you have it.

Mike, an interesting show.