Berkshire Meeting: Buffett on His Successor's Pay Package

A shareholder asks, through Andrew Ross Sorkin, about how Mr. Buffett's successor should be compensated, joking that the company could hire a compensation consultant to do the job. Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger both have repeatedly slammed the work done by consultation consultants.

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger have each collected $100,000 in annual salary for more than 25 years. Berkshire also listed $387,881 in costs for personal and home-security services provided for Mr. Buffett as part of his compensation package last year.

Mr. Buffett says the right person to lead Berkshire next would already be wealthy and wouldn't be doing the job for the money. He imagines a pay package where they would be paid "a very modest amount" and be given options where the strike price increases annually, to reflect the fact that the value of the company should rise each year. But he would want the chief executive to be required to hold the shares "for a couple years after retirement."

Then comes the latest slam on compensation consultants.

"If the board hires a compensation consultant after I go, Mr. Buffett says, "I will come back."

Adds Mr. Munger: "There's a lot of mumbo jumbo in this field, and I don't think it's going away."

"Oh it's not going to go away," counters Mr. Buffett. "It's going to get worse."

Click here to see the full live coverage of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting:

http://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/berkshire-hathaway-2017-annual-meeting-analysis

Write to Erik Holm at erik.holm@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 06, 2017 13:20 ET (17:20 GMT)