Warren Buffett’s Base Pay Was Only $100,000

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 2, 6:35AM EDT

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Warren Buffett’s Base Pay Was Only $100,000 — © Scott Olson / Getty Images

According to the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A | BRK-A Price Prediction) proxy, Warren Buffett was paid only $100,000 in 2023. The company spent another $313,595 on security for its CEO. Buffett is among the world’s wealthiest people. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, he ranks eighth with a net worth of $139 billion.

Buffett is also among several CEOs paid very little in annual compensation. Among those who made just $1 a year at some point are Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Larry Page of Alphabet. All have two things in common with Buffett. Each founded his company, and each was, and still is, fabulously rich.

Berkshire Hathaway’s stock started last year at $313 and closed the year at $360. While it did not match the surge in mega-cap tech stocks, it beat the S&P 500.

Many investors do not invest in Berkshire Hathaway as a short-term holding. They buy the stock because of Buffett’s long-term skill of investing in public companies and buying other companies, many of which are private. (See which dividend monsters Warren Buffett loves.)

Since its founding in 1965, Berkshire Hathaway has had a 19.8% compound annual growth rate, while the S&P 500 is up only 9.9%. According to U.S. News & World Report, “For every $10,000 invested in Berkshire in 1965, investors would have $378.76 million by the end of 2022. S&P 500 investors would have $2.48 million.” It is hard to overstate how low Buffett’s pay is.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.