Warren Buffett to step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway • FRANCE 24 English

Time now for a look at the today’s top business news with Brian Quinn. Starting with the end of an era as legendary investor Warren Buffett gets ready to step down. He uh is indeed the 94year-old Buffett is the CEO of Bergkshire Hathaway, the longest serving CEO in the S&P 500. This weekend he announced that he will be stepping down at the end of the year. It’s his 60th year at the helm of Berkshire, which was a struggling mid-level textile firm when Buffett took it over in 1965. Since then, he’s turned it into a $1.2 trillion conglomerate with full ownership of US companies like Geico, Duracell, and Fruit of the Loom that bring in some $10 billion in quarterly operating profits. It’s also got a $264 billion stock portfolio and around $350 billion in cash. Buffett’s investment savvy earned him the nickname of the Oracle of Omaha. He sat out the9s.com boom and avoided the subsequent bust. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Berkshire had enough cash on hand to prop up Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs. Buffett also recently sold off a big chunk of the company’s stock portfolio, just ahead of the recent market turmoil. Brookshire’s class A shares currently trade at nearly $810,000 each. Buffett says he’ll be hanging on to all of his as he passes the reigns to his successor Greg Ael. Here’s Buffett. I have no intention zero of selling one share of Perkshire halfway. It’ll it’ll get given away. The decision to keep every share is an economic decision because I think the prospects of Bureer will be better under Greg’s management than than mine. US President Donald Trump has opened yet another front in his global trade war. This time it’s the entertainment industry. So Eve Trump says he plans to slap tariffs of 100% on foreignmade films as he claims the US film industry is dying a very fast death. US film production overall accounted for 14.5 billion dollars in spending last year. That is down 26% from 2022. In a post on his truth social network, the president accused foreign countries of using incentives to lure filmmakers and studios out of the US. Hollywood has been losing film productions to other countries including Canada and the UK in part due to tax breaks for film productions there. Several other US states though have also offered such incentives. The US China trade war has already hit the film industry meanwhile with Beijing reducing its quota of American films allowed to be shown in the country. California Governor and Trump adversary Gavin Newsome has been trying to get the state to approve its own tax incentives for the sector. Trump called Newsome grossly incompetent as he defended his tariff scheme on Sunday. Here’s the president. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States and we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. I mean, they’re supporting them financially. So that’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense. Okay, I check in on the day’s trading action. Brian, uh, most Asian exchanges are actually closed for holidays on Monday. Traders in Japan, South Korea, and China all have the day off. Australia’s main index, though, lost nearly a percent on Monday following the electoral victory of Prime Minister Anthony Albanzy’s ruling labor government with trade uncertainty weighing heavy on investor sentiment there. India’s Nifty50 index meanwhile gaining half a percent on Monday led by shares in Adani Enterprises. It’s up nearly 5% amid reports that its founder Indian billionaire Gotamadani is in talks with the Trump administration to get the criminal charges launched lodged against him in a US overseas bribery case dismissed there. Finally, for business, the United States’s economy may have been the envy of the world. Well, until recently anyway. But its figures have masked a vast and long-running inequality. Indeed. Uh Eve, you can see that inequality in the growing prevalence of food banks. Once a safety net for the job list, their use is exploding across the United States, including for the gainfully employed. That comes as the Trump administration is cracking down on what it perceives as wasteful spending, cutting funding for crucial programs, including for organizations that are preventing people from starving. As the cost of living skyrockets, Luke Shrego has more. Outside a Florida food bank, a regular site, dozens of vehicles parked up and waiting for the next delivery, often for hours. We were here this morning at 1:30 in the morning to be during the night to be one of the first ones in line because it gets filled up so fast and the food is very minimal. I don’t know where my next meal is going to come from. Income stagnation and rising living costs have hit many ordinary Americans, pushing even those with what could be considered average jobs to food banks to supplement the groceries they can still afford. It’s a trend seen across the United States that grew with the economic shock from the pandemic and that has only worsened in recent years. Prior to the pandemic, we were distributing about 30 million pounds of food uh each year. Right now, we’re distributing nearly 60 million pounds of food each year, making an already hard situation that much more precarious. Federal funding cuts that began in March are threatening to pull the rug out from under many organizations helping with food security. The US Department of Agriculture stopped $500 million of food deliveries and cut another billion dollars in funding for food relief programs. And food banks are feeling the pinch. About a year ago, we were sometimes seeing deliveries that were 30 or 40,000 pounds worth of USDA food. Um the last couple of deliveries have been more like£10,000 and under. So, it’s a really significant drop off that we’re seeing since the impacts of um everything that’s happening at a federal level. With private donations not even close to making up the shortfall, some food banks have scaled back their aid. Just as food insecurity reaches the highest level it’s been in a decade. The richest country in the world there food banks grow in popularity. Indeed. Brian Quinn with the business news. Thanks indeed for that.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett says he will hand over control of his $1.2 trillion conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway to successor Greg Abel by the end of the year. Also in this edition: Donald Trump threatens 100% US tariffs on foreign-made films, and Americans with jobs are increasingly turning to food banks to make ends meet.

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