Who is Greg Abel, the executive picked to be successor to Warren Buffett?

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — When Warren Buffett announced at his annual shareholder meeting Saturday that he is stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year, he elevated a low-key 62-year-old Canadian executive named Greg Abel who has long been one of his top lieutenants.

For the past seven years, Abel has been overseeing Berkshire’s BNSF railroad and its treat makers See’s Candies and Dairy Queen along with dozens of other manufacturing and retail businesses that Buffett acquired over the years.

He grew up in Canada as a hockey player and learned the value of hard work as he redeemed discarded bottles and worked for a small company filling fire extinguishers. Now he finds himself at the top of the food chain in the investment world.

Berkshire confirmed Abel as Buffett’s successor in 2021 after former Vice Chairman Charlie Munger let it slip at the annual meeting. Since then, Abel has largely remained in Buffett’s shadow although shareholders have had a chance to get to know him a bit when he appeared alongside Buffett at the annual meetings and in interviews.

Berkshire's board will now vote on whether to formally approve Abel as the new CEO to take over at the end of 2025. At the annual meeting in Omaha, Buffett said he expects that to occur by a unanimous vote.

Abel will step forward to take responsibility for all of Berkshire’s eclectic assortment of businesses with their nearly 400,000 employees and the conglomerate’s massive stock portfolio. Buffett and members of Berkshire’s board who for years have devoted much of their time to finding Buffett’s successor have praised Abel’s brilliance and knack for understanding all kinds of businesses.

Buffett once said Berkshire is “so damn lucky” to have Abel ready to take over, but he will have trouble coming close to Buffett’s remarkable track record of outpacing the market. Whereas Buffett grew Berkshire over the decades by making well-timed deals and stock investments at attractive prices, Berkshire’s massive size has made it that much harder lately to find anything big enough to change the conglomerate’s bottom line.

Abel has big shoes to fill, but no one expects him to match the accomplishments of Buffett that made him a billionaire many times over and one of the wealthiest investors of the past century. Longtime Berkshire board member Ron Olson said two days before the announcement that he believed Abel was ready to take over.

“Is he another Warren Buffett? No, there is no other Warren Buffett that I know. But he has so many of the fundamentals of Warren,” Olson said. “He is for sure high integrity. He is a hard worker. He is a strategic thinker."

Buffett has said for years that Abel’s main job when he becomes CEO will be to preserve Berkshire’s unique decentralized culture built on independence, integrity and trust. In fact, Munger’s comment that gave away Abel’s future role was that “Greg will keep the culture.”

Executives at a diverse mix of Berkshire subsidiaries, including sneaker maker Brooks Running, flooring giant Shaw and Borsheims jewelry have said they all turn to Abel whenever they face tough questions in their businesses related to strategy or operating details, and he’s always available when they need him though he will challenge them.

“When I think about Greg, he not only has high business acumen, but he has really high business instincts,” Dairy Queen CEO Troy Bader said Friday. “The intuition is really important. And, you know, Warren has that intuition, but Greg has a lot of it as well."

Abel has never done many interviews, though he put his detailed business knowledge on display at the Berkshire meetings when discussing utilities and the railroad. But he did offer a glimpse into his background to the Horatio Alger Association when that group honored him in 2018.

Abel's family-oriented upbringing in Edmonton, Alberta, and lessons in hard work and perseverance were similar to what Buffett learned while working in his grandfather’s Omaha grocery store as a kid.

“I think hard work leads to good outcomes. In my schooling, in sports, and in my business positions, I learned that if I put in a lot of work and was well-prepared, then success would be more likely,” Abel said in 2018.

Abel lives about two hours from Buffett’s hometown in Des Moines, Iowa, where he has led Berkshire Hathaway Energy since 2011 and helped coach his kids’ hockey and soccer teams. He is expected to continue living there because Berkshire is so decentralized that there is little reason to move to its Omaha headquarters. Buffett only had a couple dozen people working in his office as he spent his days reading business reports and making the occasional phone call.

FILE - Berkshire Hathaway shareholders line up to take selfies with Greg Abel Friday, May 3, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)

FILE - Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Greg Abel checks out the flight simulators offered by one of Berkshires companies, Flight Safety as he toured the exhibit hall Friday, May 3, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. ahead of Saturday's meeting. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)

FILE - Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Greg Abel poses for pictures with shareholders while touring the booths Berkshires companies set up, Friday, May 3, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)

FILE - Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Greg Abel is seen at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Neb., on May 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

RHO, Italy (AP) — No ice is colder and harder than speedskating ice. The precision it takes has meant that Olympic speedskaters have never competed for gold on a temporary indoor rink – until the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.

In the pursuit of maximum glide and minimum friction, Olympic officials brought on ice master Mark Messer, a veteran of six previous Olympic speedskating tracks and the ice technician in charge of the Olympic Oval in Calgary, Canada — one of the fastest tracks in the world with over 300 records.

Messer has been putting that experience to work one thin layer of ice at a time since the end of October at the new Speed Skating Stadium, built inside adjacent trade fair halls in the city of Rho just north of Milan.

“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in icemaking,’’ Messer said during an interview less than two weeks into the process.

If Goldilocks were a speedskater, hockey ice would be medium hard, for fast puck movement and sharp turns. Figure skating ice would be softer, allowing push off for jumps and so the ice doesn’t shatter on landing. Curling ice is the softest and warmest of all, for controlled sliding.

For speedskating ice to be just right, it must be hard, cold and clean. And very, very smooth.

“The blades are so sharp, that if there is some dirt, the blade will lose the edge,’’ Messer said, and the skater will lose speed.

Speedskater Enrico Fabris, who won two Olympic golds in Turin in 2006, has traded in his skates to be deputy sports manager at the speedskating venue in Rho. For him, perfect ice means the conditions are the same for all skaters — and then if it's fast ice, so much the better.

"It's more of a pleasure to skate on this ice,'' he said.

Messer’s first Olympics were in Calgary in 1988 — the first time speedskating was held indoors. “That gave us some advantages because we didn’t have to worry about the weather, wind blowing or rain,’’ he said. Now he is upping the challenge by becoming the first ice master to build a temporary rink for the Olympics.

Before Messer arrived in Italy, workers spent weeks setting up insulation to level the floor and then a network of pipes and rubber tubes that carry glycol — an antifreeze — that is brought down to minus 7 or minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 to 19.4 degrees Fahrenheit) to make the ice.

Water is run through a purification system — but it can’t be too pure, or the ice that forms will be too brittle. Just the right amount of impurities “holds the ice together,’’ Messer said.

The first layers of water are applied slowly, with a spray nozzle; after the ice reaches a few centimeters it is painted white — a full day’s work — and the stripes are added to make lanes.

“The first one takes about 45 minutes. And then as soon as it freezes, we go back and do it again, and again and again. So we do it hundreds of times,’’ Messer said.

As the ice gets thicker, and is more stable, workers apply subsequent layers of water with hoses. Messer attaches his hose to hockey sticks for easier spreading.

What must absolutely be avoided is dirt, dust or frost — all of which can cause friction for the skaters, slowing them down. The goal is that when the skaters push “they can go as far as possible with the least amount of effort,’’ Messer said.

The Zamboni ice resurfacing machine plays a key role in keeping the track clean, cutting off a layer and spraying water to make a new surface.

One challenge is gauging how quickly the water from the resurfacing machine freezes in the temporary rink.

Another is getting the ice to the right thickness so that the Zamboni, weighing in at six tons, doesn’t shift the insulation, rubber tubing or ice itself.

“When you drive that out, if there’s anything moving it will move. We don’t want that,’’ Messer said.

The rink got its first big test on Nov. 29-30 during a Junior World Cup event. In a permanent rink, test events are usually held a year before the Olympics, leaving more time for adjustments. “We have a very small window to learn,’’ Messer acknowledged.

Dutch speedskater Kayo Vos, who won the men’s neo-senior 1,000 meters, said the ice was a little soft — but Messer didn’t seem too concerned.

“We went very modest to start, now we can start to change the temperatures and try to make it faster and still maintain it as a safe ice,’’ he said.

Fine-tuning the air temperature and humidity and ice temperature must be done methodically — taking into account that there will be 6,000 spectators in the venue for each event. The next real test will be on Jan. 31, when the Olympians take to the ice for their first training session.

“Eighty percent of the work is done but the hardest part is the last 20 percent, where we have to try to find the values and the way of running the equipment so all the skaters get the same conditions and all the skaters get the best conditions,’’ Messer said.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Serpentines are set on the ice of the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Workers clean the ice surface during a peed skating Junior World Cup and Olympic test event, in Rho, near Milan, Italy, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)