Ajit Jain: A man who loves work, not money!

Ajit Jain, the 66-year-old insurance chief at Berkshire Hathaway, moved a step closer to becoming the chief executive of the famed investment conglomerate after billionaire chairman Warren Buffett named him the insurance business vice-chairman, a level in the hierarchy the India-born executive would now share with the group’s energy boss Greg Abel.
While Warren Buffett’s son Howard Buffett would succeed him as Berkshire chairman, the chief executive’s position was still open, but has just narrowed to the two, reports indicate.

Jain is one of the favourites of Buffett, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to praise the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur alumnus who lifted a sagging insurance business to great heights.


“When Ajit entered Berkshire’s office on a Saturday in 1986, he did not have a day’s experience in the insurance business. Nevertheless, Mike Goldberg, then our manager of insurance, handed him the keys to our small and struggling reinsurance business. With that move, Mike achieved sainthood: Since then, Ajit has created tens of billions of value for Berkshire shareholders. If there were ever to be another Ajit and you could swap me for him, don’t hesitate. Make the trade!”

The bouquets from the Oracle of Omaha included public admiration of Jain’s ability to negotiate challenges. If someone has an option to save one of the three in a sinking ship that included himself, his business partner Charlie Munger and Ajit Jain, opt for Jain. ``Swim to Ajit,’’ Buffett wrote in a letter to shareholders.

The Odisha-born Jain’s first choice was not financial services, but technology-related salesmanship at IBM. Thanks to the Swadeshi fervour of the then Indian government that led IBM to shut its operations locally, Jain moved to secure an MBA at Harvard.

Jain, a cousin of former Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank Anshu Jain, is a humble man. He visits New Delhi occasionally to meet his family, but on such occasions, Jain can often be sighted travelling in non-air-conditioned metered taxis.

Berkshire’s insurance businesses generated after-tax earnings of $1.4 billion from underwriting in 2016, an increase of $208 million from a year ago.

While the insurance business that Jain heads is a risky one, he doesn’t expose the company to risk.

“His operation combines capacity, speed, decisiveness and, most important, brains in a manner unique in the insurance business,” Buffet once wrote. “Yet he never exposes Berkshire to risks that are inappropriate in relation to our resources.”

Buffett is so impressed with Jain that once he wrote to Jain’s parents asking whether they have one more Ajit. The star was embarrassed when his parents framed the letter and hung it in the family living room in New Delhi.

How does one become so much loved by the god of investing?

“Buffett looks for managers who love their work and not money,” Jain had told ET in a conversation in 2011.