Todd Combs

Last updated
Todd Combs
Born
Todd Anthony Combs

(1971-01-27) January 27, 1971 (age 53)
Sarasota, Florida, U.S.
Alma mater Florida State University
Columbia Business School

Todd Anthony Combs (born January 27, 1971) is a former hedge fund manager and current investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway, who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of GEICO since January 2020. [1] Alongside Ted Weschler, he is frequently cited as a potential successor of Warren Buffett as the chief investment officer of Berkshire. [2] In 2016 he was appointed board member of JPMorgan Chase. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Todd Anthony Combs was born and raised in Sarasota, Florida attending Riverview High School. [4] [5] He is a 1993 graduate of Florida State University, with degrees in finance and multinational business operations. Combs later attended Columbia Business School in New York City, graduating in 2002. [6] [7] [8]

Career

After graduating college, Combs became a financial analyst for the State of Florida Banking, Securities and Finance Division. From 1996 to 2000 he was a pricing analyst at Progressive Insurance and from 2000 to 2002 he was an insurance analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. From 2003 until 2005, Combs worked at Copper Arch Capital, a hedge fund run by Scott M. Sipprelle. [9]

In 2005, with $35 million in seed money from Stone Point Capital, Combs formed Castle Point Capital. He served as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Greenwich, Connecticut, based hedge fund until 2010, during which time the returns were a cumulative 34%, according to an investor. [9] [10] In October 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett had tapped Combs to eventually replace him as the chief investment officer of Berkshire Hathaway. [6]

In September 2016 Combs joined the board of U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase, an appointment that expanded Berkshire's ties in the financial services industry to the top three banks in America. [3]

On December 23, 2019 Combs was announced as the new CEO of GEICO, a subsidiary of Berkshire. He will continue in his duties as a portfolio manager for Berkshire. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren Buffett</span> American businessman, investor, and philanthropist (born 1930)

Warren Edward Buffett is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist who currently serves as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his immense investment success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. As of January 2024, he had a net worth of $122 billion, making him the tenth-richest person in the world.

Li Lu is a Chinese-born American value investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of Himalaya Capital Management. Prior to immigrating to America, he was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests. In 2021, he also co-founded The Asian American Foundation and serves as its chairman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkshire Hathaway</span> American multinational conglomerate holding company

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Founded in 1839 as a textile manufacturer, it underwent a drastic restructuring into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the leadership of chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger. The company's main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float in a broad portfolio of subsidiaries, equity positions and other securities. Buffett and Munger are known for their advocacy of value investing principles and under their direction, the company's book value has grown at an average rate of 20%, compared to about 10% from the S&P 500 index with dividends included over the same period, while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Graham</span> American financial analyst, investor, and professor

Benjamin Graham was a British-born American financial analyst, investor and professor. He is widely known as the "father of value investing", and wrote two of the discipline's founding texts: Security Analysis (1934) with David Dodd, and The Intelligent Investor (1949). His investment philosophy stressed independent thinking, emotional detachment, and careful security analysis, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing the price of a stock from the value of its underlying business.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Value investing</span> Investment paradigm

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. All forms of value investing derive from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

Borsheims is a luxury jewelry store that sells fine jewelry, timepieces, engagement rings and home decór in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1870, Norwegian immigrant and silversmith Louis Borsheims founded his independent jewelry business that would later become known as Borsheims. The luxury jewelry retailer began as Brown and Borsheim. In 1907, Louis A. Borsheim sold his interests in Brown and Borsheim, thus began the Omaha staple, Borsheims. The business was sold to Louis Friedman and Simon Gorelick in 1947. In 1950, Louis bought out his brother in law, Simon Gorelick and his son Ike joined the business, who both retained the Borsheims name. In 1980, Ike Friedman bought out his father, Louis. Ike's son Alan and son in law joined the business. In 1985, his other son in law, Donald Yale joined the business. His two daughters, Janis Yale and Susie Cohn also worked in the business.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Arthur Fisher</span> American stock investor

Philip Arthur Fisher was an American stock investor best known as the author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a guide to investing that has remained in print since it was first published in 1958. Along with Thomas Rowe Price, Jr., Fisher is one of the early proponents of the growth investing strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Decker</span> American businesswoman (born 1962)

Susan Lynne Decker is an American businesswoman. She was president of Yahoo! Inc in 2007 and 2008, leading the operations of the company while Jerry Yang was chief executive officer. In 2017, Decker co-founded a social networking platform called Raftr.

Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, based in New York City, is the investment firm founded in 1969 by William J. Ruane, Richard T. Cunniff and Robert Goldfarb.

Ajit Jain is an Indian-American executive who is the Vice Chairman of Insurance Operations for Berkshire Hathaway as of January 10, 2018. Ajit Jain is an older cousin of Anshu Jain, who was the former Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank.

John J. Byrne was an American longtime insurance industry executive who was CEO of GEICO, White Mountains Insurance Group and Fireman's Fund. He also served as chairman of Overstock.com.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Schroeder</span> American author

Alice Schroeder is an American executive, financial journalist, and author who was Berkshire Hathaway's leading sell-side insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley and later became Warren Buffett's appointed biographer. Schroeder remains a widely-regarded insurance expert, having most recently served as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Prudential PLC. In the first week of October 2008, she published The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, a New York Times bestseller. As a project manager for the US Financial Accounting Standards Board, she oversaw the release of SFAS No. 113, a critical change in US reinsurance accounting regulations. Since 2008, Schroeder has worked as a columnist for Bloomberg News.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David L. Sokol</span> American business executive (born 1956)

David L. Sokol is an American business executive. He is a Chairman of Teton Capital LLC, headquartered in Wilson, Wyoming. He served as chairman, president, and CEO of NetJets, as well as a chairman of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, of which Berkshire Hathaway holds a 100% and 89.8% stake respectively.

Stephen B. Burke is an American businessman. He is the senior executive vice president of Comcast and chairman of NBCUniversal.

Tracy Britt Cool is an American business executive and entrepreneur who was widely noted as a Warren Buffett protégé. She chaired four Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries before co-founding Kanbrick, a private equity firm, in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Tarrant</span> American investor and film producer (1956–2019)

Jeffrey Glynn Tarrant was an American investor. He was the founder and chairman of MOV37 and Protégé Partners, firms specializing in identifying, seeding and early stage investing in investment funds. He was also a founding partner of film production company Candescent Films. He died from brain cancer in 2019.

Ted Weschler is an American hedge fund manager who is the current investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway. Alongside Todd Combs, he is frequently cited as a potential future Chief Investment Officer of Berkshire.

Gregory Edward Abel is a Canadian businessman, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and vice-chairman of non-insurance operations of Berkshire Hathaway since January 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haven Healthcare</span> American healthcare company

Haven was a not-for-profit, healthcare-focused entity created through a joint venture by American companies Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The entity's stated goals were to improve healthcare services and lower costs for the three companies' employees, while making primary care easier to access, making prescription drugs more affordable and rendering insurance benefits easier to understand. The company was headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with offices in New York City.

References

  1. ↑ "GEICO's Roberts to Retire at the End of 2020, to Be Succeeded by Todd Combs of Berkshire Hathaway". Business Wire. 2019-12-23. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  2. ↑ Serwer, Andy (28 April 2017). "EXCLUSIVE: Warren Buffett's money managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, speak". Yahoo! Finance . Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  3. 1 2 Stempel, Jonathan (2016-09-20). "Buffett investing deputy Combs joins JPMorgan board". Reuters . Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  4. ↑ MCQUAID, Kevin; Pollick, Michael. "Sarasotan in line as possible Buffett successor". Herald-Tribune. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  5. ↑ "Sarasota native not among Buffett promotions". Sarasota Herald Tribune. 10 January 2018. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  6. 1 2 Susan Pulliam; Serena Ng (28 October 2010). "Buffett Flags a Successor" . Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 27 October 2010.
  7. ↑ Shinewald, Jeremy (October 27, 2010). "MBA News: CBS '02 Grad to Manage Berkshire's Billions". nbamission.com. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  8. ↑ Foley, Stephen (18 May 2016). "Warren Buffett's protégés flex investment muscle". Financial Times. The Financial Times Ltd. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  9. 1 2 Barr, Alistair (27 October 2010). "Photo of Berkshire's 'mystery man' elusive". MarketWatch. Retrieved 28 May 2019.
  10. ↑ Serena Ng; Susan Pulliam; Gregory Zuckerman (28 October 2010). "Buffett: Combs Is 'a 100% Fit'". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 27 October 2010.
  11. ↑ "Warren Buffett protege Todd Combs named Geico CEO". CNBC . 23 December 2019.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.