Warren Buffett partner Charlie Munger to step down as Daily Journal's chairman and donate $1 million of his stock

Charlie Munger will leave his role as chairman of Daily Journal, according to a regulatory filing Monday.
Munger will stay on the board and donate $1 million in Daily Journal stock to go toward an equity-incentive plan.
Warren Buffett's business partner has served as chairman of the newspaper publisher since 1977.

Charlie Munger will leave behind the title of chairman at Daily Journal following a 45-year run, with the newspaper publisher and software supplier also saying Monday the billionaire investor offered to donate $1 million of its stock to the company.

The 98-year-old — best known as Warren Buffett's business partner and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway — will remain on the Daily Journal's board, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Munger has served as chairman since 1977 and oversees the Daily Journal's investment portfolio. The company's publications include the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the largest legal newspaper in California. The Journal Technologies subsidiary supplies case management software systems to courts and other justice agencies. Notable stocks in its portfolio include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Alibaba.

Munger's move was announced alongside other C-suite changes. Gerald Salzman, who worked at the Daily Journal for 44 years, retired as CEO last week. "Jerry has spent more than half his life working at the Daily Journal, and he's 83 years old. Imagine that!," said Munger said in remarks included in the SEC filing.

The CEO role will be filled on an interim basis by Steven Myhill-Jones, the 46-year-old founder of Canadian software company Latitude Geographics.

Daily Journal also said it will accept Munger's offer to gift $1 million worth of his personal stock in Daily Journal to help the company establish a new equity-incentive plan.

"I want for this gift to reflect the confidence I have in the existing team and Steven's new leadership," he said.

Munger is a famously cautious investor and blunt in his assessments, including dismissing bitcoin as "rat poison" and saying the world "would be better off" without special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACS.

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