It’s not Buffett’s Berkshire anymore as Greg Abel splashes $16.8 billion in cash, hints at different way of doing business

Berkshire Hathaway‘s new CEO Greg Abel started off the week with a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison and then followed that up Monday with a $10 billion stock investment in Google’s parent company. Abel also hinted that he may depart from Warren Buffett‘s longtime hands-off operating model by consolidating Taylor Morrison with Berkshire’s existing site-built homebuilding operations that are part of its Clayton Homes subsidiary. For six decades under Buffett, Berkshire promised to largely leave companies alone after it acquired them and allow the executives to keep running the day-to-day operations the same way. “Over time, we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform,” Abel said in a statement about his first big acquisition on Sunday, “enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans.” In addition to Clayton, which specializes in manufactured homes but also has a site-built unit, Berkshire owns several other housing related businesses including Benjamin Moore paint and Shaw Floors. Berkshire’s new investment in Alphabet will expand the stake that Buffett’s company started to build last fall. By the end of March, Berkshire’s Alphabet investment had tripled to include nearly 58 million Alphabet shares worth almost $17 billion. Alphabet said Monday that Berkshire has agreed to buy $5 billion of Class A common stock and another $5 billion of Class C stock as part of a broader plan to raise $80 billion to pay for the computing infrastructure needed to power its AI offerings. It’s not clear how much consolidating Abel might do among the dozens of companies Berkshire owns. Those holdings include an assortment of insurers like Geico, major manufacturers such as Precision Castparts and a slew of retail and service companies like NetJets, Dairy Queen and Helzberg Diamonds. But Abel is known as a much more active manager than Buffett ever was. “Given