Oracle of Omaha era ends as Buffett steps down as Berkshire chair

Warren Buffett stepped down as chair of Berkshire Hathaway on Friday, with son Howard Buffett taking over the board’s stewardship in a long-signalled succession plan that included long-time lieutenant Greg Abel appointed chief executive earlier this year.

Markets were mixed on Friday as oil prices fell and bond yields crept higher, while Anthropic was said to be planning the release of a new model, even as it pushed out a planned listing to November amid growing calls to slow development.

German chancellor Friedrich Merz said he will stay on as conservative leader, despite his party’s heavy losses in regional elections, while Gulf leaders will meet with US President Donald Trump this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss the Middle East conflict.

And Australian futures are pointing to a soft start to the week for the ASX as investors weigh up the pace of interest rate hikes by the Reserve Bank of Australia, while earnings from KMD Brands and Fonterra Cooperative Group later this week are the main corporate events on this side of the Tasman.

End of an era

Berkshire shares rose on Friday leading into the investment firm’s leadership change, with Warren Buffett stepping into a chairman emeritus role having spent more than six decades building the conglomerate. He will stay on the board as a director, with Howard Buffett assuming the chair, having served on the board since 1993.

Stocks on Wall Street were mixed as Brent crude oil futures fell 1.5% to US$103.21 a barrel as Gulf leaders head to New York for the UN General Assembly, where they’ll meet with US President Trump to push for a resolution to the conflict in Iran. Qatar prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said the region’s leaders needed to work together to restore stability in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the yield on US 10-year treasuries rose 5 basis points to 5% on Friday as investors continued to weigh up the track for Federal Reserve rate hikes. New Zealand’s equivalent note was at 4.95% at 7am in Auckland.

“US equities were little changed into the end of last week, despite a weak session for major European indices and a move higher in global bond yields,” Bank of New Zealand senior interest rate strategist Stuart Ritson said in a note.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.2% on Friday, with International Business Machines, Walt Disney Co, and Nike at the bottom of the leaderboard. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 nudged up 0.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.4%, with semiconductor firms and chipmakers such as Nvidia back on the rise.

Not quite ready

The Wall Street Journal reported Anthropic delayed its planned initial public offering to November amid growing calls to slow the pace of development, spearheaded by the Claude developer’s chief executive, Dario Amodei. Meanwhile, Reuters reported Anthropic was considering rolling out a new artificial intelligence model in response to OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, and Anthropic separately said it would partner with Accenture for independent evaluation of its models.

Alphabet’s Google said its Gemini AI model hacked other companies in the first known instance of the big tech firm’s AI system breaching its guardrails.

And the Financial Times reported about US$18 billion of loans backing a data centre leased to Oracle in New Mexico were being traded around 10% below their face value as the project faces local opposition over the potential impact on water supply and air quality.

Across the Atlantic, stock markets declined on Friday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 and France’s CAC 40 both sliding 1.5%, while Germany’s DAX fell 1.6%.

German chancellor Merz pledged to stay on in his role after his Christian Democratic Union party was routed in regional elections, with the Alternative for Germany party expected to win the largest share of the vote in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The CDU was projected to win just 5% of the vote, having secured 13% in the 2021 election.

Back in the US, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent was meeting China’s vice-premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday to seek agreements on AI, tariffs and critical minerals ahead of a summit between presidents Trump and Xi Jinping in November.

On Friday, President Trump said he was banning CNN, MS Now (formerly MSNBC) and Politico from the White House, accusing the major news outlets of reporting fake news. The move was expected to face legal challenges under the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free speech and a free press.

Australian futures are pointing to a 0.7% slide for the S&P/ASX 200 index when trading opens across the Tasman, with speeches from RBA officials in view as investors ponder whether the central bank would raise interest rates further to tame inflation.

The kiwi dollar traded at 80.28 Australian cents at 7am from 80.37 cents last week, and was at 57.20 US cents from 57.30 cents.

Reserve Bank of New Zealand credit card figures are due today, while earnings from KMD and Fonterra are the main corporate events this week.

Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women.