Who will be the next Warren Buffett?

There are several reasons why there won’t be another Warren Buffett. Times have changed, and the opportunities are no longer there, says Matthew Lynn.

Warren Buffett Portrait
Warren Buffett has announced he is stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
(Image credit: Bonnie Schiffman/Getty Images)

On 3 May, Warren Buffett announced he was stepping down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, handing over management of one of the largest and most successful investment firms of all time to Greg Abel. Investors will be asking whether Abel is up to the challenge, or, if not, where they can find someone as brilliant as the man he is replacing. The blunt answer is this: the markets won’t ever see his like again. There are three reasons for that.

First, as Buffett himself was always the first to point out, he happened to start his long career at precisely the right time. The post-World War II US economy in which he made the bulk of his fortune was characterised by a long period of rapid growth that had not been seen before, and which we may never see again. Sure, it took incredible skill to pick the right stocks and spot the right trends, but that is a lot easier when the economy is growing at the same time. A slower global economy, and one dominated as much by China as by the US, won’t offer the same opportunities.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.