Berkshire Empire Gears Up Collaboration
April 04 2019 - 08:51AM
Dow Jones News
By WSJ City
The myriad companies of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway have
run completely independently of each other for decades. That isn't
always the case any longer.
KEY FACTS
-- Top executives from Berkshire units now gather regularly to share
strategies and best practices.
-- Some firms participate in purchasing cohorts to get group rates for items
like travel and raw materials.
-- Last year, employees from more than 40 Berkshire businesses met to
discuss sustainability.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The rise in internal collaboration, which executives rarely
discuss publicly, hints at what the firm might look like when
Buffett is no longer running it as chairman and CEO.
"Even though we're in different industries and have different
business models, there's so much that connects us. Why wouldn't we
take advantage of the talent across the Berkshire Hathaway
organization?" said Mary Rhinehart, CEO of Berkshire's
building-products maker Johns Manville.
Last year the company's subsidiary CEOs started reporting to
Buffett's lieutenants, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, rather than to
Buffett. Aat the subsidiary level, roughly one-third of Berkshire's
business units have announced a new CEO in the past five years as
an older generation of managers has retired or stepped back into
chairman roles.
A fuller story is available on WSJ.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 04, 2019 08:36 ET (12:36 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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