How Todd Combs got started at Berkshire
Todd Combs, one of Warren Buffett’s handpicked investment lieutenants and a key executive at Geico, Berkshire Hathaway’ s crown jewel insurance business, is leaving the conglomerate after a 15-year tenure that helped define the firm’s post-Buffett transition. Combs, 54, first caught the attention of Buffett’s late partner Charlie Munger, who famously recounted receiving an unsolicited letter from the former hedge fund manager. “He sent me a letter. That’s how it happened,” Munger said in 2011. “And at any rate, I had a meal with him, and then I called Warren and said, ‘I think this is the guy you should talk to.'” Combs joined Berkshire in 2010 and spent 15 years wearing two hats — helping oversee a portion of its sprawling public-equity portfolio while also running Geico, where he became chief executive in 2020. His background in financial companies was seen as a particular asset. “Todd has the advantage that he’s been thinking about financial companies like Berkshire for a great many years,” Munger said at the time. Berkshire announced this week that Combs is headed to JPMorgan Chase to lead a new Security and Resiliency Initiative at the nation’s largest bank, to find direct equity investments in the defense, aerospace, health care and energy industries. Jamie Dimon told the Financial Times this week that JPMorgan is a “natural home” for Combs because he’s sat on the bank’s board for nine years. Combs finds it “unbelievably interesting to use his skills in different ways” at JPMorgan, Dimon said. Combs’ exit comes as Berkshire continues to hammer out its leadership structure ahead of Buffett’s departure from the CEO role at the start of the new year. The company is seemingly moving to centralize decision-making that had long been decentralized under Buffett, adding a general counsel role and creating a president overseeing consumer, service and retail businesses. ‘Genuine and Authentic’ In interviews over the years, Combs has described a candid relationship with the Oracle of Omaha. He recalled that Buffett challenged him early on about his preference for Mastercard over Berkshire’s longtime holding American Express , as well as his view that Progressive had structural advantages over Geico. Berkshire’s Geico is “better at marketing and branding, but Progressive is a data company and data is going to win in the long run,” Combs told Buffett. He later acknowledged that he didn’t yet understand Geico’s technology stack as deeply as he does now. Combs said he never felt pressure to tell Buffett what he wanted to hear, arguing that excessive deference can distort decision-making at the top. Buffett appreciated Combs’ candor, “because when you’re CEO, or especially Warren or whatever, everybody kisses your ass, everybody tells you what they think you want to hear… I’m not here to agree with you. And you’re not here to agree with me… So that honesty, I guess, is at least genuine and authentic,” he said.
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