Ted Weschler: The Next Warren Buffett?

A knack for finding value in distressed companies is helping Ted Weschler carve out a role at Berkshire Hathaway that goes beyond the stockpicking job he was hired for. Since joining Warren Buffett’s company in January, the 51-year-old former hedge fund manager has made a bid for a bankrupt mortgage business, negotiated a deal that pushed Berkshire deeper into newspaper publishing, and reviewed possible takeover targets—in addition to running a multibillion-dollar equity portfolio.

He and Berkshire’s other investment manager, Todd Combs, oversee a portion of the company’s $86.2 billion stock portfolio. In July, Buffett said that each man would have responsibility for about $4 billion. Weschler’s expanding role and experience show why he could one day be a candidate to run the company that Buffett, 82, built over four decades through stock picks and acquisitions, says Alice Schroeder, author of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life and a Bloomberg View columnist. “He has a background in broad capital management, including private equity, mergers and acquisitions, owning businesses, and being directly involved in their management,” she says. In addition, Schroeder adds, takeovers will be more important to Berkshire in the future if the company is going to continue to grow.