"He is a model for everything a manager should be"

After 60 years at GEICO, and decades of praise from Warren Buffett, Tony Nicely is retiring at the end of this year.

Nicely was the insurer's chairman and CEO for 25 years until 2018, when he became executive chairman.

In his letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders for that year, Buffett wrote that Nicely is "a model for everything a manager should be," crediting his management of GEICO for increasing Berkshire's intrinsic value by more than $50 billion.

(In his 2006 letter, Buffett even suggested shareholders should name a child Tony.)

In 1996, "after Tony had re-energized GEICO," Berkshire bought the 50% of the company it didn't already own.

Nicely oversaw a period of enormous growth for GEICO, powered in part by humorous advertising that highlights its competitive rates.

By the time he stepped down as CEO more than three years ago, it was the country's second-largest auto insurer with nearly 17 million policyholders. (It's now up to 18.6 million.)

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - Dec 23, 2021

Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on November 15, 2021, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of September 30, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management’s 13F filing on August 16, 2021.

In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2020 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2020 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2020 in the letter.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch