00:00Today on Forbes, happy birthday Warren Buffett. He's 95 and one of 36 American billionaires over 90.
00:10Warren Buffett took a seat on stage at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting for the 60th and likely
00:16final time in May. He wore a red tie that matched the two cans of Coca-Cola in front of him,
00:22one cherry and one regular. Buffett has joked that his longevity is tied to his diet of
00:27McDonald's, Coke, and Dairy Queen, all companies in which Berkshire has invested.
00:33While his voice was raspy and he hunched over a bit, the Oracle of Omaha was as sharp and unphased
00:39as ever, answering a question about recent market turmoil. In front of a crowd of some 40,000,
00:45he said, quote, what happened in the last 100 days is really nothing. The day I was born,
00:52the Dow Jones was at 240. That was August 30th, 1930. Between that and the low, it went from 240
00:59to 41. He went on to say that if people worried about whether their stocks went down 15%,
01:06they needed a, quote, different investment philosophy.
01:10Then, at the very end of the four-plus hour-long meeting, he dropped a bomb. Buffett announced that
01:16he'd retire as Berkshire's CEO at the end of the year, nearly six decades to the day from when he
01:21took control of a small, struggling textile company called Berkshire Hathaway. The announcement came
01:27as a surprise to even his key lieutenant, Greg Abel, who was named Buffett's successor in 2021,
01:33but didn't know about his imminent plans. The fact that someone as rich and successful as Buffett,
01:38he's been on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans every year since the first list in 1982,
01:45and is still the 10th richest person on the planet despite having given away more than $64 billion,
01:50chose to work for decades after the average American's retirement age might strike some
01:56as crazy. But there are plenty of other octogenarian and nonogenarian billionaires who,
02:02like Buffett, would rather work until the day they die.
02:05The oldest American billionaire, George Joseph, is still working at $5.5 billion in revenue Mercury
02:12General, the insurance company he founded in the early 1960s.
02:16A flight navigator during World War II, Joseph stepped down as CEO at age 85, but still owns
02:2235% of the publicly traded company, and mans the controls at age 103 as chairman of the publicly
02:29traded firm. He is the only American billionaire over the age of 99.
02:35Media giant Rupert Murdoch, who is 94 years old, stepped down as executive chairman of $8.5 billion
02:42in revenue News Corp almost two years ago, ceding the title to his son Lachlan, but continues to
02:48have a large presence at the company. Altogether, there are a record 36 American billionaires who
02:54are 90 and older. Another 150 are in their 80s, including former Victoria's Secret CEO Les Wexner
03:02and former New York City mayor and Bloomberg co-founder Michael Bloomberg.
03:06It's impressive given that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the average life expectancy
03:12in the U.S. is 78.4 for all Americans and 75.8 for the nation's men, who dominate the billionaire
03:19ranks.
03:21Overall, only 3.8% of the U.S. population is 80 or older, according to the 2020 census results,
03:28compared to 20% of American billionaires on our list.
03:31Why does a larger percentage of American billionaires seem to live past 80 than the U.S. population
03:37overall? There could be a lot of reasons, including the fact that wealthy people can afford the
03:43best healthcare, personal trainers, and freshest foods. One billionaire who passed away in June
03:50at age 102 was pretty certain why he lived so well for so long. David Murdoch, the longtime majority
03:57shareholder of Dole, one of the world's largest producers of fruits and vegetables, was a strong
04:03advocate of plant-based diets and ate only fruits, including banana and orange peels, vegetables,
04:09and fish, having publicly stated his aim to live to 125.
04:13For full coverage and to see the list of America's 10 oldest billionaires, check out Martina de
04:20La Cosa's piece on Forbes.com.
04:24This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
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