The Warren Buffett CEO

Miles interviews the operating managers of Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiaries — the people who actually run the furniture stores, the brick plants, the insurers — and asks what it is like to report to Buffett. The result is a portrait of extreme decentralisation from the receiving end: almost no head-office contact, cash swept upward, capital allocation kept at the centre and every other decision delegated to the operator.

Why it’s on the list: Bold on @mastersinvest’s 2025 list, meaning the curator rated it very good rather than merely read.

Where I saw it: @mastersinvest’s “2025 Reading … so far” list, August 20, 2025, where it appears in bold. The full 46-title list is transcribed on 2025 Reading So Far… (tweet).

Connections

• 2025 Reading So Far… (tweet) — the list this came from.
• Warren Buffett — seen from the operators’ side of the table rather than the shareholders’.
• Berkshire Hathaway — the subsidiary managers are the book’s interview subjects.
• Decentralization — the central mechanism the interviews keep describing.
• Succession Planning — written in 2002, when who-runs-what-after-Buffett was the open question.