Berkshire broad-bases its leadership, India Inc can learn too

Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway are known synonymously for big investments in the world. With cash pile of $397 billion (Rs. 37.71 lakh crores), Berkshire continues to be the world’s largest cash holding entity. However, holding large cash piles is never new to Berkshire. It has been discussed but less queried or questioned. The aura of the leadership by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger may have subdued the importance for cash.

For close to 60 years until now, Berkshire had lean leadership at the top, while operationally it has a decentralized leadership. Its top leaders included Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Greg Abel, and Ajit Jain, until the death of Charlie and the retirement as CEO by Warren Buffett. The representation to the stakeholders and particularly at the Annual General Meeting of the company, it was only the above 4 who spoke. For instance, Marc Hamburg, the CFO of Berkshire Group for 40 years and retiring in June 2026, is hardly known outside close circles. Such was the focus or dominance, unintended though, was of the top leaders. 

Dominant one-person or family-members top leadership is not new or rare even for biggest and popular corporations. Elon Musk is the only name outside his group that people know about Tesla. Jensen for Nvidia, Mark Zuckerberg for Meta, Jeff Bezos for Amazon, Tim Cook for Apple, and so on. This irrationality is widely spread in the world. India is not an exception. Mukesh Ambani at Reliance, Gautam Adani at Adani, Dilip Singhvi at Sun Pharma, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw at Biocon, and so on show that India has same pattern and more than in other countries.

The AGM (annual general meeting) of Berkshire Hathaway concluded 2nd May 2026 (early morning 3rd May 2026 as per Indian time) has a strange, surprising, and inspiring change. Berkshire adopted a collaborative stage very different from its earlier practice of only Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger sitting on the dais. The changed structure included heads of various Berkshire’s subsidiaries sitting on the main stage and answered questions directly at the AGM.

This change also comes at a time when Berkshire Hathaway is facing new challenges of investing its huge cash piles, demise of Charlie 2.5 years back, retirement of Warren Buffett as CEO in December 2025, retirement of long served old CEOs, technology disruptions, and increasing competition for many of its subsidiaries. This democratic leadership spokesperson model abandons the earlier personality-driven practice at Berkshire.

Further, the elevation of CEOs of subsidiaries to the mainstage communicates a new message to the stakeholders about the deliberate attention of the board in ensuring smooth continuity of decision making, stakeholder-engagement, and value of the company. India Inc can learn and pick lessons from the changed mainstage structure of Berkshire.

Dr. Kishore Nuthalapati is the Regional Director of PRMIA, US for Hyderabad Chapter. He is serving as the CFO of BEKEM Infra Projects Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad. Views are personal and are not of any organizations he is or was associated with.

- Dr. Kishore Nuthalapati