No. of Recommendations: 11
what does this board think of warren and charlie's many quotes on reputation and integrity hypocritical when it comes to partying with chubb and pilot?
i dont think they were (or could be) coerced into any of these dealings. there is substantial background that berkshire's meddling with the economics of the pilot acq triggered the downward spiral of behavior by the haslams.
I don’t know enough about Chubb to comment, but I live in Knoxville, home of Pilot, where this was very big news indeed.
The first raid on Pilot was in 2015, over a billing issue which had been going on for several years, perhaps a decade. (It involved not giving agreed upon rebates to long haul trucking firms, but mostly only the Mom & Pops were shafted because they didn’t have the accounting prowess to know they were being screwed.)
Buffett didn’t start acquiring Pilot until 2017, so clearly the acquisition had nothing to do with the monkey business. Now it is true that Buffett likes to buy upstanding, reputable businesses so this one might not quite fit the mold, but I note that elephants like Pilot, a privately owned but gigantic and national business are hard to come by, and I note that most, perhaps all of Pilot’s upper management has been broomed since the acquisition. That is also anomalous as Buffett likes to keep management intact, but then there is an exception for every rule, and keeping this management place was not an option either morally or legally.
Meanwhile: gas & oil, basic energy where Berkshire is comfortable, at least on several parts of the value chain, and now at retail as well.
