Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American holding company, based in Omaha, Nebraska, that owns insurance, freight rail, utility and energy, manufacturing, service and retail businesses. It began as a textile manufacturer and became a diversified conglomerate after control of the company changed hands in 1965. In its annual report for 2025, Berkshire reported total revenues of about $371.4 billion and said it employed approximately 387,800 people worldwide at the end of that year.

History of Berkshire Hathaway

The company’s early business was making textiles, and textile operations were still a core part of Berkshire in the 1970s. In his 1977 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett described a textile business that again had a very poor year, even as the insurance operations did well. He also noted that after the change in corporate control in 1965, the textile division generated capital that was used to finance the purchase and growth of the insurance business.

That shift from mills to insurance defined the company. Berkshire entered insurance by acquiring National Indemnity Company in the 1960s, and its 1999 shareholder letter tracks the float that its insurance segments generate. Float is the premium money an insurer holds before it pays claims, and Berkshire can invest it in the meantime.

The 1999 letter also gives a sense of scale. It reported that per-share book value had grown from $19 to $37,987 over the 35 years since present management took over, a compound annual rate of 24.0 percent. The 2025 annual report lists Buffett as chairman and chief executive officer since 1970. In May 2025 the board of directors named Gregory E. Abel to succeed him as chief executive officer, effective January 1, 2026.

Businesses and services of Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire describes the most important of its businesses as insurance, a freight railroad and a group of utility and energy companies. Its insurance subsidiaries write property and casualty coverage as well as life and health coverage, both as primary insurers and as reinsurers, which means they insure other insurers against large losses. The three underwriting groups named in the 2025 annual report are GEICO, the Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group and the Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group.

The railroad is Burlington Northern Santa Fe, known as BNSF, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas. According to the annual report, BNSF operates over 32,500 route miles of track in 28 states and also operates in three Canadian provinces, and it had about 35,000 employees at the end of 2025. It is one of the largest systems for rail freight in North America.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy is a holding company headquartered in Iowa. The report says its four regulated U.S. utilities serve about 5.4 million retail customers, and its five interstate pipeline companies operate about 20,900 miles of pipeline for natural gas. It also holds electric transmission and distribution operations in Great Britain and Canada and a mix of mostly renewable power projects.

The remaining businesses are widely varied. Precision Castparts, based in Lake Oswego, Oregon, makes complex metal components and investment castings. International Dairy Queen supports a franchise system of roughly 7,800 restaurants, and See’s Candies makes boxed chocolates. Shaw Industries makes carpet and flooring, and Fruit of the Loom makes basic apparel. The company’s own list of operating subsidiaries also includes Duracell, Clayton Homes, NetJets and Pilot Travel Centers.

Corporate structure and operations

Berkshire is incorporated in Delaware, and its annual report calls its operating subsidiaries unusually decentralized. There are few centralized or integrated business functions, and each subsidiary sets its own policies for hiring and managing people. The chief executive officer is responsible for major capital allocation decisions, for investment activities and for evaluating how the operating businesses perform.

In practice this means the headquarters is small compared with the size of the enterprise. About 80 percent of employees work in the United States, and about 19 percent are represented by unions. Manufacturing businesses employed about 175,600 people, and the insurance businesses about 42,600, at the end of 2025.

Growth has come largely from acquisitions. The 2025 annual report records the Alleghany acquisition, which brought W&W|AFCO Steel, Jazwares and IPS into the group in October 2022. Berkshire first acquired a 38.6 percent noncontrolling interest in Pilot Travel Centers in 2017, bought an additional 41.4 percent on January 31, 2023, and took control. It acquired Bell Laboratories on July 31, 2025.

The scale of the enterprise shows in its balance sheet. At December 31, 2025, the consolidated statements reported total assets of about $1.22 trillion and Berkshire shareholders’ equity of $717.4 billion, up from $649.4 billion a year earlier. Those figures are accounting values, not a statement about the market value of the company.

Impact of Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire matters to insurance, transportation and energy because it owns large, capital-intensive businesses in each of them and holds them for the long term rather than reselling them. Its railroad and utility subsidiaries are regulated, and their results depend on the demand for freight movement and electricity as well as on regulators’ decisions. Its insurance subsidiaries earn money from underwriting and from investing float, and the company says it expects to earn an underwriting profit over time.

Berkshire also reports to its owners in an unusual way. Its website lists Buffett’s letters to shareholders from earlier decades and the later letters from Abel, which gives readers a long written record of how management described its own decisions. The two letters opened for this entry, from 1977 and 1999, are both available there as plain web pages.

Leadership succession and key-person risk

Berkshire’s annual report is candid that the company depends on a few key people for major investment and capital allocation decisions. It lists this as a risk factor and explains that the board is responsible for choosing a successor to the chief executive. The 2025 report also notes that Greg Abel, who had been Vice Chairman for non-insurance operations, took over those decisions from January 1, 2026.

The company’s website lists letters to shareholders from both Warren Buffett and Greg Abel, with the most recent Abel letter dated February 28, 2026. Readers who want current figures should consult the latest annual report on Form 10-K, which is filed each February with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 4, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue