Howard Buffett spent much of his adult life a world apart from traditional corporate America, tending to farms in Nebraska and Illinois, but always kept an eye on how his father, Warren Buffett, ran one of the world's most-admired companies.

Now, the billionaire's son is ready to reap what he sowed. Howard Buffett, 71, on Friday assumed the title of chairman as his father retires from the role. His task, say people close to the company, will be to guard the unique culture Warren Buffett nurtured to keep everything from candy to railroads to insurance under one roof in a $1 trillion conglomerate.

"Berkshire's culture and values are a big part of what makes it such a unique company; they are also a big part of what has created so much value for Berkshire's shareholders," Howard Buffett, who goes by Howie, said Friday. "My job, and that of my fellow directors, is to ensure that Berkshire continues to reflect its great culture and strong values to extend that track record far into the future."

Howie is, by most corporate standards, an unconventional choice as chairman. He never graduated from college, and has a relatively limited record in running businesses, doing deals or managing a vast portfolio of stock investments. But Berkshire is an unusual company, and his father concluded long ago that he was best equipped to preserve what made Berkshire different, even after Warren Buffett was no longer there to lead it.

"His only job...is not operational," said Henry Asher, president of the Northstar Group, which owns shares of Berkshire. "His primary role is, if there were ever to be a time where they felt they needed to make a change at the top, that would be something that he'd intervene on."

Berkshire controls a sprawling insurance operation, a collection of businesses that range from railways and industrial equipment to retail outlets and utilities, and a stock portfolio managed by the chief executive.

Questions over whether it should remain that way are nothing new, but they grew in number when Warren Buffett, who turned 96 this year, ceded his role as CEO to Greg Abel in January, and will undoubtedly become louder now that Buffett is also stepping down as chairman.

"Howard has served Berkshire's owners on this Board for more than three decades," Abel said. "He is direct, thoughtful, and deeply cares about this company. That is exactly what you want in a chairman."

Buffett has heard whispers about the sustainability of Berkshire's structure, and his son's appointment is in part an act to keep them at bay.

"I care more about the future of Berkshire after I die than during the period I'm alive. It's my creation," Buffett told The Wall Street Journal for a 2025 article. "What I want is a company that's successful and also embodies a company that belongs to the shareholders.

"That is something that takes a long time to build and could be torn apart very easily if it fell into the hands of people who would want to break it up."

According to people familiar with the matter, Abel called Berkshire board members in recent days to inform them that Buffett wanted to step down as chairman, and to seek their vote in selecting Howard as his successor.

Buffett is stepping down at a time when Berkshire has raised eyebrows for its slumping stock price and a roughly $365 billion mountain of cash it held by the end of the second quarter. That sum has led some to question how the company will use all that money and if it should return some to shareholders by way of a dividend or other means.

Through Friday's close, Berkshire's Class A shares have fallen 5.7% to $763,600 from a record high of $809,350-touched the day before Buffett announced his retirement last year. In that time, the S&P 500 index has climbed around 35%.

While Buffett remains mentally sharp, people familiar with his health said he has been slowed physically by a fall in June that left him with a broken leg. One person close to him believed the time Buffett spent at home recuperating gave him an opportunity to contemplate the company's future and the decision about when to step down.

His admission during a recent CNBC interview that he was behind Berkshire's decision to open a stake in Alphabet last year also led some market watchers to wonder if Buffett was still behind some key decisions at the conglomerate, despite Abel being the CEO. Some investors viewed Warren's decision as a move to quell debates about who is really in charge at Berkshire.

"I think Warren wanted to be crystal clear that Greg is making the capital allocation decisions," said Chris Bloomstran, chief investment officer of Semper Augustus Investments Group. "He wanted to just eliminate any confusion about that: This is actually Greg's show now."

Ted Weschler, a money manager who has worked closely with Buffett in recent years and invests some of the company's cash, will remain at the company, according to someone close to the matter. Buffett, Berkshire's largest shareholder, will remain involved in the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shareholders expect Howie to assert himself in a different way: Making sure that Abel, and whoever comes after him, remains in step with the culture his father built.

Howie is Warren Buffett's middle child with his first wife, Susan. He works on food security and conflict mitigation through his Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which, like the foundations of his siblings Susie and Peter, are funded by gifts of Berkshire shares from their father.

Howie's foundation has supported agricultural training in Rwanda, the construction of a hydroelectric plant in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, aid to Ukraine by paying for food assistance, demining operations and other initiatives.

As a young man, he moved to Los Angeles to work at See's Candies, a Berkshire company, at his father's advice after finding it difficult to adjust to the unstructured environment at several colleges he attended.

After a brief first marriage, he married Devon Morse, who brought her four daughters to the family. They left California for Nebraska and welcomed a son, Howard Warren Buffett.

In Omaha, he cycled through various careers: He started his own excavating business, then began farming, with Warren Buffett later purchasing a farm for him to work. Howie said he paid market-rate rent to his father. In 1989, he took office on the county board of commissioners. He joined the state ethanol board as a member, and later became chairman.

His family moved to Decatur, Ill., where Archer-Daniels-Midland was based, after the agricultural giant named him to its board in 1991. The company later hired him as corporate vice president and assistant to the chairman. He left shortly after an antitrust investigation into the company broke into public view. ADM went on to plead guilty to conspiring to fix prices and set sales volumes on two products it sold. The company agreed to pay $100 million in penalties in what was the largest-ever criminal antitrust fine at the time.

"I knew that I would never know what the company did or didn't do," he said. "When I made that decision, I alienated some of my best friends...[T]hey would look at me like I was a traitor."

Howie Buffett joined Berkshire's board in 1993, and has also served on the boards of irrigation and infrastructure company Lindsay Corp., packaged-food maker ConAgra Foods and Coca-Cola, in which Berkshire has a sizable stake.

Warren Buffett told the Journal in 2000 that Howie would one day succeed him as chairman because of his business acumen and desire to maintain the core tenets of Berkshire's distinct culture. The Journal reported at the time that Howie would eventually pass the post to a younger Buffett after decades in the role.

Howie told the Journal in recent years that Berkshire's headquarters will never move from Omaha, and pledged to hold annual meetings as the company has for decades, where leaders take questions for hours at a time.

Few, though, expected the senior Buffett to leave as chairman so soon into his retirement.

"My sense is people probably thought that Warren was going to stick around a little longer," said CFRA Research's Cathy Seifert. "On a formal basis, Berkshire lost a big cheerleader and their capital allocator."