Berkshire CEO Greg Abel sworn in as U.S. citizen at baseball game

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Abel, a longtime Iowa resident who was born in the Canadian city of Edmonton in 1962, was among the roughly two dozen people from 16 countries who participated in an annual naturalization ceremony hosted by the Iowa Cubs Thursday night in Des Moines, before the AAA minor league baseball team played the Buffalo Bisons.

In an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick during the lunch break of last month’s Berkshire annual meeting, Warren Buffett revealed Abel would be getting his American citizenship “very soon” and “as successful as he’s been in everything else … it means something to him to become an American citizen.”

“You can’t buy that anyplace — (laughs) — or package it, you know?”

Abel has an estimated net worth of around $1 billion and runs a company valued at more than $1 trillion, but he generally maintains a low profile in public and his role as Berkshire’s CEO was not highlighted at the event, even as he threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game.

The report by NBC affiliate WHO-TV says only that “Greg Abel, a former Canadian citizen” threw the first pitch and “the ball went home with him, a nice souvenir from his first day as an American.”

It was the 18th annual naturalization ceremony organized by the team, with 533 new citizens sworn in.

The team says another 5,000 candidates have become citizens at other non-game day ceremonies at the ballpark over the past six years.

Iowa Cubs General Manager Randy Wehofer told WHO many of the new citizens have “worked really hard, they’ve sacrificed a lot [and taken] a big risk to leave their home, to chase the American dream that many of us were born into, but not all. And so I think we can identify with that even if it’s not our story. It’s the American story.”

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