Browns owner Jimmy Haslam being investigated over Berkshire Hathaway bribery claims
NY Post
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is being investigated over claims from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway that he attempted to bribe employees of Pilot Travel Center to boost profits this year with the intent of reaching a greater sale price of the business.
A lawyer for Pilot revealed that Haslam is being probed by federal prosecutors during a hearing in a civil suit between Haslam and Berkshire, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
Berkshire began acquiring Pilot, a chain of truck stops and gas stations, in 2017, and currently owns 80 percent of the company.
The Haslam family has an annual option to sell the remaining 20 percent of Pilot based on a valuation of 10 times the previous year’s EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes), a common measure of profit.
While this would seem to be pretty straightforward, the sides are at odds based on accounting methods and different incentives.
In the short run, Berkshire would prefer the profits and thus the required purchase price to be lower, whereas the Haslam family would want the opposite.
