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Berkshire’s new panel: Greg Abel, Ajit Jain, Katie Farmer, Adam Johnson

ByTilman Versch Reading Time: 7 minutes

The 2026 AGM is unlike any before it. Warren Buffett is no longer behind the microphone. A new era has begun — and this year, four executives, Greg Abel, Ajit Jain, Katie Farmer, and Adam Johnson, will face shareholder questions from the stage of the CHI Health Center in Omaha. If you’re heading to the “Woodstock for Capitalists” and want to know who you’re watching, this is your cheat sheet to get to know the new Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2026 panelists.

Here’s who will be answering your questions on May 2, 2026.

Table of Contents

Greg Abel — The new boss of Berkshire Hathaway

As of January 1, 2026, Greg Abel is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway — the first person to hold that title since Warren Buffett took over in 1965. (Wikipedia)

Abel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1962 — the son of a working-class family who reportedly got his first taste of business collecting and cleaning empty soda bottles to redeem for five cents apiece. He’d optimize his bike route home from school to maximize his haul. It’s a detail that could have come straight out of a Buffett biography, and it probably explains why the two men got along so well. (Fortune)

After earning a commerce degree from the University of Alberta and starting his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Francisco, Abel joined CalEnergy in 1992 — the utility company that would eventually become Berkshire Hathaway Energy. He turned it from a regional operation into one of North America’s largest regulated utility groups. In 2018, Buffett elevated him to Vice Chairman for non-insurance operations. In 2021, Buffett publicly confirmed Abel as his chosen successor. In May 2025, it became official. (Britannica / SEC Filing)

This AGM is Abel’s first as CEO. He’s stepping into the biggest set of shoes in American business. Analysts describe him as more operationally hands-on than Buffett — a detail-oriented executive who knows Berkshire’s subsidiaries inside-out. He’s already made moves: restarting share buybacks, investing his entire 2026 after-tax salary into Berkshire Class A shares, and expanding Japan exposure. The man is not warming up. He’s running. (CBS News)

Buffett’s verdict? “Greg Abel has more than met the high expectations I had for him when I first thought he should be Berkshire’s next CEO. He understands many of our businesses and personnel far better than I now do.” (CBS News)

Want to hear Greg Abel think out loud before Saturday? Start with this playlist of his interviews and appearances:

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Ajit Jain — The insurance genius Buffett called an “idea factory”

If Greg Abel is the new face of Berkshire, Ajit Jain is the institution. Born in Odisha (then Orissa), India, Jain studied mechanical engineering at IIT Kharagpur — one of the most selective universities in the world — before earning his MBA at Harvard Business School. He worked at IBM India and then at McKinsey before Warren Buffett called him in 1986. ( Wikipedia)

Here’s the remarkable part: when Jain joined Berkshire’s reinsurance division, he had no prior experience in insurance. He has since built it into one of the most profitable insurance operations on earth.

Buffett has described Jain’s mind as an “idea factory” and written that he “has created tens of billions of value for Berkshire shareholders.” In the 2014 shareholder letter, Charlie Munger listed Jain alongside Greg Abel as the two proven performers capable of leading Berkshire. For years, Jain was the other name in the succession conversation — right up until Abel got the nod

In January 2018, Jain was named Vice Chairman for Insurance Operations and joined Berkshire’s board of directors. He lives in the New York City area and oversees the entire global reinsurance and insurance empire, including GEICO and General Re. (Wikipedia)

The insurance float that funds so much of Berkshire’s investment firepower? That’s Ajit Jain’s machine. At the AGM, he tends to be precise, thoughtful, and occasionally disarmingly blunt about what risks he will and won’t take.

Catch Ajit Jain in action before the meeting:

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Katie Farmer — The railroad CEO who made history

If you’re going to the AGM and you’re not yet familiar with Katie Farmer, fix that. She is President and CEO of BNSF Railway — North America’s largest railroad by route miles and revenue — and the first woman ever to lead a Class I railroad. That is not a footnote. That’s a landmark. (TCU / Wikipedia)

Farmer joined Burlington Northern straight out of college in 1992 as a management trainee in Fort Worth, Texas — the same year Greg Abel joined what would become Berkshire Hathaway Energy. She never left. Over more than three decades, she worked her way through every major function of the company: operations, marketing, finance, customer solutions, service design. By 2018, she was Chief Operations Officer. On January 1, 2021, she became CEO — with Warren Buffett publicly expressing full confidence in her leadership. (BNSF press release)

Railway Age named her 2023 Railroader of the Year. She now sits on the board of American Airlines as well. BNSF hauls freight across a 32,500-route-mile network spanning 28 states. When America’s supply chains grind — or flow — Farmer’s decisions are a reason why.

At the AGM, expect questions about freight volumes, energy transition, and how BNSF fits into Berkshire’s future capital plans. Farmer is known for her operational depth and direct communication style. She knows her railroad inside and out. In her own words: her focus as CEO has always been to “lead BNSF on a journey to fulfill our vision by positioning us to succeed during all business cycles.”

Get to know Katie Farmer before Saturday:

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Adam Johnson — The Pilot Who Runs the World’s Largest Private Jet Fleet

Adam Johnson joined NetJets in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in business management from Ohio State — and a pilot’s license. Nearly three decades later, he runs the place. Since becoming Chairman and CEO of NetJets in 2015, he has turned the world’s largest private aviation company into one of Berkshire’s most celebrated operating businesses. (Private Jet Card Comparisons)

Johnson worked his way up through almost every operational layer of NetJets: Executive Director of the Flight Center, SVP of Logistics, SVP of Administrative Services, President of Global Sales, Marketing, and Service. He climbed rungs. The result is an executive who understands the business from the tarmac up. (Leaders Magazine)

Warren Buffett praised him effusively at the 2023 AGM: “Adam Johnson has performed; you can’t believe what he’s done with the business. It was a tough model for a long time, but he’s brought it where it is, and we should have a wonderful company forever.” (Private Jet Card Comparisons)

That praise had consequences. In December 2025, just ahead of Abel taking over as CEO, Johnson was appointed President of Berkshire’s Consumer Products, Service, and Retailing businesses — a portfolio of 32 companies — while continuing to run NetJets. Greg Abel called him “an accomplished leader with a proven ability to deliver long-term shareholder value.” In the 2025 annual report, Abel singled him out again: “Adam and his team at NetJets think like owners and earned their reputation for operational excellence.” (Berkshire Hathaway press release / Private Jet Card Comparisons)

For AGM attendees, Johnson represents a new generation of Berkshire leadership: operators who have spent careers inside the culture, built something genuinely great, and earned their way into the broader empire.

Get to know Adam Johnson via this playlist:

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The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2026 panelists –
Five questions worth asking on May 2

Here are five questions worth having in your back pocket as you walk into the arena.

  • What does Greg Abel actually think about capital allocation? Buffett spent sixty years as the ultimate capital allocator. Abel is an operator by instinct and training. The $300+ billion cash pile is sitting there. Tariffs are reshaping global trade. Markets are richly valued. Does Abel deploy — and how? His first AGM as CEO is the first real chance to hear his instincts under pressure, not in a prepared statement.
  • How does Ajit Jain think about catastrophe risk in 2026? Climate events are getting bigger and more frequent. The insurance industry is quietly retreating from entire regions of the United States. Jain has spent four decades taking on risks nobody else would touch — at prices that made sense. Where are those prices today? What risks does even he decline?
  • What is Katie Farmer’s honest view of BNSF’s next decade? The railroad is a capital-intensive, long-cycle business. Electric vehicles are changing freight patterns. Coal volumes are declining. The energy transition is both a tailwind and a headwind depending on what you’re hauling. Farmer has run this railroad through a pandemic and a supply chain crisis. Where does she think it goes from here — and what keeps her up at night?
  • What has Adam Johnson learned about running a business the Berkshire way? He’s now responsible for 32 consumer companies in addition to NetJets. That’s a lot of CEOs to support without micromanaging, plenty of cultures to preserve, and a lot of Berkshire DNA to transmit. How does he think about that responsibility — and what has running NetJets for a decade taught him that no business school could?
  • And the biggest question of all: what does the new Berkshire look like? Buffett was the investor. Abel is the operator. Does that shift how Berkshire thinks about acquisitions? About holding forever versus trimming? About what kinds of businesses it wants to own next? The transition has been smooth so far — but the AGM is where shareholders get to probe what “smooth” actually means beneath the surface.

Four people. One stage. No scripts. That’s what makes the Berkshire AGM unlike anything else in the investing world.

Tilman Versch runs Good Investing and the Plus community. He is an expert on the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting and helps the experienced investors in his community to grow, connect, and have fun.