Buffett's Berkshire countersues billionaire Haslams in battle over Pilot valuation
investing.comBy Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) — Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) has accused billionaire Jimmy Haslam of promising secret payments to staff that would inflate the price Berkshire would have to pay for the Haslam family's 20% stake in truck stop operator Pilot Travel Centers.
Berkshire made the accusation in partially redacted filings made public on Tuesday in a countersuit against the Haslam family in Delaware Chancery Court, where the Haslams have been suing Buffett's company over Pilot.
Lawyers for the Haslams did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jimmy Haslam also owns the Cleveland Browns football team.
In a complaint last month, the Haslams accused Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire of changing its accounting for Pilot to depress the business's profit, which is used to set the price Berkshire would owe if the family exercised a put option to sell its 20% stake early next year.
Berkshire's countersuit seeks an injunction blocking the Haslams from exercising their option in 2024 or distorting Pilot's results through unauthorized payments to employees.
Berkshire paid $11 billion for its 80% Pilot stake in 2017 and early 2023, and according to Pilot estimated that the other 20% would be worth $3.2 billion without the accounting change.
In its countersuit, Berkshire said it learned this month that Jimmy Haslam had as early as March devised a scheme to secretly promise «massive side payments» to high-level Pilot employees, in order to inflate short-term profit at the Knoxville, Tennessee-based business.
Berkshire said it believes the promised payments affected the employees' day-to-day decision-making, giving them incentives to make short-term decisions that would boost the Haslams' profit at
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