Ajit Jain, the president of Berkshire Hathaway’s re-insurance group in Stamford, Connecticut, has long been on industry watchers list of successors to Warren Buffett before the legendary investor praised him in a letter to shareholders on Sunday.

Ajit Jain who is born in 1951, in Orissa. He graduated in 1972 from IIT Kharagpur with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, worked for IBM in India from 1973 to 1976. He then moved to the US, to persuade MBA degree from Harvard University.

He joined McKinsey & Co but returned to India in the early eighties to get married, returning to McKinsey in the US, because, as he later told some close friends, his wife wanted to move there more than he did. In 1986, Jain then worked on insurance operations for Warren Buffett and left McKinsey. Warren Buffeet, world’s greatest living investor has been justly hailed as the Oracle of Omaha his financial skills catapulted him to the status of the worlds richest man last year, ahead of buddy and bridge partner Bill Gates, and Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim Helu.

Buffett has hinted that his successor may be a person of Indian origin, Ajit Jain. In his annual letter to shareholders of his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett showered praise on Jain, who handles the reinsurance division.

Last year, the company’s insurance units reported an underwriting profit of $2.79bn, a 17 per cent fall compared with 2007’s figures.