Tracy Britt Cool to Leave Berkshire Hathaway
Tracy Britt Cool, one of Warren Buffett ’s key lieutenants in recent years, is leaving Berkshire Hathaway to create a mini Berkshire of her own, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Ms. Britt Cool joined Berkshire in 2009 at age 25 as Mr. Buffett’s financial assistant, a job he created for her. In 2014, she became chief executive of Pampered Chef, a cookware company owned by Berkshire.
Now 35, Ms. Britt Cool wants to build an investment vehicle that acquires companies for the long term, like Berkshire does.
Ms. Britt Cool, who is based in Chicago, plans to leave Pampered Chef at the end of March. She will also resign from the board of Kraft Heinz in the first quarter of 2020, she said.
In her decade at Berkshire, Ms. Britt Cool specialized in helping Berkshire companies that were struggling. At various points, she served as chairman of Benjamin Moore & Co., Larson-Juhl, Johns Manville and Oriental Trading Co., meaning that those companies’ CEOs reported directly to her. She took over Pampered Chef when its sales and earnings were falling.
“She was the fireman,” Mr. Buffett said in an interview. “Anything I’ve assigned her she’s done a first-class job on.”
In the second quarter of 2019, Pampered Chef’s sales rose 19% and its pretax earnings rose 52% from the prior year, Mr. Buffett said.
