Berkshire Hold, Vistra Buy, and five SA shares to Accumulate – Ricardo week to 13 November

doing exactly what we own it for. Before we leave Omaha, let's go back to a change that happened in September, one that will shape Berkshire for a generation. On the 18th of September, Warren Buffett stepped down as chairman. He's now chairman emeritus. He stays on the board.

96. He's been succeeded by his son Howard. Warren's letter to shareholders was classic buffet. Greg runs the company. Howard will guard its culture and values, he wrote. And then the best line: think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against. Only Warren would describe his own son as an insurance policy and make it sound like a compliment.

Well, the structure is clear. Greg Abel is the chief executive. He allocates the capital. Howard is the guardian. He's been a Berkshire director for 33 years, and that's longer than Warren had been in business when he took control of Berkshire. If a future chief executive ever drifts from the Berkshire way, chasing size for its own sake or doing a vanity deal, Howard is the man who will say no. So who is Howard Buffett?

Almost American investors know him as a farmer from Illinois, a philanthropist focused on food security, a former United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Against Hunger. He's also sat on the boards of Coca-Cola, Archer Daniels Midland, and ConAgra. But South Africans have a very special reason to pay attention. Howard Buffet knows our country well. His first big philanthropic project in Africa happened right.

Here and it was about cheetahs. He made significant investments in South Africa, and it was my privilege to meet him through a common love for wildlife. We hosted him and Howard Jr. one year at the pre-AGM dinner in Omaha, a real treat for the South African contingent. And I also connected Howard and through him, the then Berkshire Energy Chief Greg Abel, yep, the same who's the CEO now, to Eskom.

It remains one of South Africa's major follies that the Paris Statal refused to entertain a partnership with Berkshire that would have avoided the load shedding disaster of the past decade and a half. At the time, Pretoria just wasn't interested in talking to one of the great energy companies in the world. What a shame. But back to Howard's direct local connection. In the late 1990s,