Markel’s Relentless Compounding Vision: Highlights From The 2025 Omaha Brunch

Held on the Sunday following Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, the 2025 Markel Omaha Brunch gathered over 2,500 investors, partners, and stakeholders to hear directly from Markel Group leadership. This year’s event focused on the company's strategic transformation, a renewed focus on insurance excellence, and its long-term mission to relentlessly compound shareholder capital.

The panel featured key figures from Markel:

• Tom Gayner, CEO of Markel Group
• Mike Heaton, COO of Markel Group
• Andrew Crowley, President of Markel Ventures
• Simon Wilson, Leader of Markel Insurance
• Brian Costanzo, CFO of Markel Insurance

Gayner at the Omaha Brunch: A Home Built to Compound

Tom Gayner opened the brunch with a reminder of Markel’s evolution, from six people gathering decades ago to an audience of over 2,500. Gayner emphasized that Markel is more than a holding company. “Markel Group,” he said, “is a home for businesses designed to relentlessly compound shareholder capital over decades.” And noting:

Any student of Berkshire, of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, or of the rule of 72 and the laws of compounding knows that the most important principle is to keep going. Keep compounding. Never stop the compounding machine, whether it involves your character, your heart, or your wallet.

For the Markel  Group system to function as outlined today and to continue empowering our people in the service of relentlessly compounding your capital, we need partners who share our long term horizon and our values.

COO Mike Heaton expanded on this framework, drawing on a Steve Jobs quote about the power of simplicity. He laid out Markel’s architecture as three pronged “triangle of culture, capital, leaders, and essentials” overseeing a network of businesses, represented as diamonds, with Markel Insurance as the central jewel. The group’s goal is to invest in and support businesses they can own forever, guided by strong leadership and corporate culture.

Specifically, Heaton states:

I am a firm believer in simplicity, a quality that is vastly underrated. Steve Jobs was its master. He once said, “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple, but it is worth it in the end because once you get there you can move mountains.”

I have witnessed that power up close. Throughout my career I have worked with many successful businesses and their leaders, including some of you here today. The very best share one trait: a single, powerful idea that aligns everything and gets everyone rowing in the same direction.

When Tom and I began discussing ways to improve our business a few years ago, we kept returning to the need for simple, clear missions and standards at every level of the organization. We have been working on that goal for some time, and in 2023 we made real progress. We reshaped leadership, re established full accountability, and realigned around a clear strategy. These three steps have been essential to our momentum.