Warren Buffett said he would possibly help finance Dan Gilbert's bid to purchase Yahoo, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman told
CNBC on Monday.
Gilbert, the chairman of Quicken Loans and owner of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, is being advised by former senior Yahoo executives Dan Rosensweig and Tim Cadogan in purchasing the struggling Internet firm, according to the website
Recode.
Another bid, that includes the combined efforts of private equity firms Bain Capital and Vista Equity Partners, are working with three other former Yahoo senior executives – Ross Levinsohn, Bill Wise, and Ken Fuchs, noted Recode.
"I'm an enormous admirer of Dan and what he has accomplished in Quicken Loans," Buffett said to CNBC. "Yahoo is not the type of thing I'd ever be an equity partner in. I don't know the business and wouldn't know how to evaluate it, but if Dan needed financing, with proper terms and protections, we would be a possible financing help."
Reuters reported that Gilbert is part of a consortium pushing to buy Yahoo. The group is in the second round of bidding for Yahoo, but it is not clear if Gilbert is using Quicken Loans as part of the consortium bid.
Susan Decker, a director on the Berkshire Hathaway's board who worked at Yahoo from 2000 and 2009, said last month on CNBC that she was pulling for the company's revitalization, according to Reuters.
"I hope the next owner can do something to revitalize the spirit of the core things that made Yahoo very, very unique and create a distinction in consumers' minds about why they love Yahoo still," Decker said. "It will be helpful if it is private or part of a much larger corporation to achieve that."
Recode said sources expect Yahoo to sell for roughly $4 billion without its $1.2 billion in patents and real estate. Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer announced in February that the company would auction off its Internet business and cut 15 percent of its workforce, noted CNBC.
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