Greg Abel, 62, is one of the most watched business leaders on either side of the border these days
Greg Abel’s interest in business, like sports, was sparked at a young age while growing up in Edmonton — with the budding entrepreneur collecting empty bottles to make some income.
Today, the vice-chair of non-insurance businesses at Berkshire Hathaway — who has been pegged as the successor to the company’s legendary CEO Warren Buffett — says his early attention to business was spurred by curiosity.
It’s something that still drives him.
As Abel returns to Alberta this week for the 25th annual Global Business Forum in Banff — and receives the inaugural Doug Mitchell Award for Global Business Leadership on Wednesday night — he says the ability to be outward thinking and continuously learn is essential for success.
“From a young age, business intrigued me. I mean, it was as simple as back in the day you could collect pop bottles and people had a tendency to throw them away. And we’d get the nickel. I almost viewed it like a business,” Abel said in an interview.
“How many could I pick up in a week and take them and clean them, fill the room and you’d get your dollar? And then, why couldn’t I get $1.05 next week? Did I have to expand my path . . . I still remember thinking, ‘OK, well, there’s a better route home, and I’ll think maybe I can get five pop bottles on the way home.’ ”
Abel, 62, is one of the most watched business leaders on either side of the border these days, marking a remarkable journey from his early years growing up, playing sports, collecting bottles and delivering flyers in Edmonton.
Berkshire Hathaway owns an array of diverse companies in insurance, utilities and railway industries — such as BNSF Railway — while its holdings include major stakes in businesses such as Apple, Coca-Cola Co. and American Express Co., and with a market capitalization topping US$970 billion, its actions command attention.
Abel runs all non-insurance operations for Berkshire “and in all respects is ready to be CEO of Berkshire tomorrow,” and still plays hockey, Buffett wrote in his annual letter to investors earlier this year.
An avid hockey fan — he’s related to legendary Detroit Red Wing Sid Abel — the Edmontonian earned a scholarship and studied business at the University of Alberta, where he graduated in 1984 with a commerce degree.
Abel initially expected to study engineering at the university, but was admitted late into business and soon found his place, he said.
“It was an opportunity to continually learn, because you could look at businesses and you knew that irrespective of the business, that there is this opportunity for the business to get better, for yourself to get better,” he said.
“But one of the things that really intrigued me at that time was this opportunity, at an early point in my life, to see this wide breadth of experiences across companies, industries, and then start that sort of lifelong journey of learning. I know that’s what drew me in early . . . It’s still what attracts me today.”
After graduating, Abel took a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers and later moved to the United States. He entered the energy sector in 1992, and later became CEO of MidAmerican Energy. (Berkshire had acquired a controlling interest in MidAmerican in 1999.)
Trans Mountain Corp. chair Dawn Farrell, former CEO of power generator TransAlta Corp., remembers meeting Abel more than two decades ago in Calgary. MidAmerican and TransAlta reached an agreement on geothermal investments in California and Farrell describes Abel as hard-working and practical.
“Right out of the gate, he’s super Canadian, highly likable and as honest as the day is long, and as authentic and as real as any person you’re ever going to get,” Farrell said this week.
“He knows where the right deal is, and what the price is, and how you need to work on it. And he’s a man of his word. So if he says, ‘OK, we’ve settled now, let’s get this done,’ we get it done.”
One of the most notable deals during his tenure as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy saw it purchase Calgary-based AltaLink — the largest regulated electricity transmission company in Alberta — for $3.2 billion a decade ago. It still owns the business.
“I have a strong belief in Alberta and where it was at that point in time and where it will continue to go as a province,” he said.
Abel recalls meeting Doug Mitchell, a prominent Calgary lawyer and community leader, through other business relationships. He became close family friends with the former Canadian Football League commissioner and his wife, Lois, who later served as Alberta’s lieutenant-governor from 2015 to 2020.
Doug Mitchell served on the board of AltaLink. Abel and the Mitchells also connected over sports, attending events together such as hockey games and the Grey Cup.
“Sport is a great part of my life and it’s been a great part of their lives,” Abel noted.
“It’s amazing when you think it was 25 years ago and here were Doug and Lois thinking about . . . that there’s a number of challenges — back then, (as) there are today — but that you really wanted to look beyond your borders,” he added.
While issues change, he believes in the approach of tackling significant challenges by having a dialogue, gathering information, ensuring you have enough perspective to understand the risks — and the opportunities — and gaining enough knowledge to move forward.
That perspective fits with the business forum, which sees leaders sitting down with other executives, policymakers and experts to discuss significant global issues.
The theme of this year’s gathering is “Turning Points: Decisive Change Ahead.” The two-day conference includes sessions on artificial intelligence, the resurgence of nuclear energy, supply chain logistics, and trade opportunities in India.
“They are global issues. I think we’re all watching around artificial intelligence, for example, and what does that mean to your company? What does that mean to your industry? What does it mean to your employees, your customers?” he added.
“When I think of AI . . . we are in a learning moment. We’re in the early innings. So, for us to say it’s absolutely going to impact our industry this way, or a company this way, I think we can all see some pretty big risks — and we can see some pretty big opportunities.
“How we’re going to manage all that is really going to come down to having excellent dialogues.”
With the rise of AI and need for electricity to power massive data centres now being planned, the energy transition has “put electrification on steroids,” said Berkshire Hathaway Energy president Scott Thon.
Indeed, electricity consumed by data centres, generative AI and cryptocurrencies could double by the end of 2026, according to the International Energy Agency.
“The power demands of the AI revolution are astronomical and they certainly could be a benefit to our existing customers, but they can also be a cost driver. And we need, as an industry on the energy transition, to figure out how can we do both?” said Thon, who is co-chair of this year’s business forum.
“We are all-in on the energy transition. We have invested close to $40 billion in renewables across our businesses … We can only go as fast as our customers can afford and we can keep the grid reliable. Those are the speed limiters on energy transition.”
Aside from the sessions, Abel will receive the Doug Mitchell Award on Wednesday night, which “recognizes an individual who demonstrates integrity, leadership, vision and action.”
“It’s very humbling,” Abel added. “When I think of Doug, and what Doug represented as a true leader, not just in business but in the communities he lived and operated in, and then for my deep love for Lois, it’s just a great honour.”
Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.