Warren Buffett May Finance Dan Gilbert's Bid to Buy Yahoo

DETROIT, MI – Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett may help another billionaire, Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, finance a bid to buy Yahoo’s internet interests, according to media reports.

Buffett said in a statement to CNBC Yahoo isn’t the kind of venture he would be interested in as an equity partner, but said he is “an enormous admirer” of Gilbert, a self-made billionaire, and what he has done at Detroit-based Quicken Loans.

“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,” Buffett said in the statement.

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Reuters reported Friday the two were among investors interested in buying the struggling company's internet assets, and the Financial Times reported Saturday that the pair had co-signed a letter saying Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, was ready to finance the deal to buy Yahoo.

Buffett’s potential backing comes as the process to sell Yahoo, the Silicon Valley darling of the dot.com bubble in 2000, enters its second round. Gilbert has also been getting advice from two of Yahoo’s former senior executives, Dan Rosensweig and Tim Cadogan, Recode reported.

Also in the running for Yahoo are private-equity giant TPG Capital and a group made up of rival private equity firms Bain Capital and Vista Equity Partners, The New York Times reported.

Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers National Basketball Association team, teamed with Buffett one other time — when Quicken Loans and Berkshire Hathaway offered a $1 billion March Madness prize for perfect brackets in the 2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. No one claimed the prize.

Gilbert, the 149th-richest person in the United States and the fourth-richest in Michigan, according to Forbes, started Quicken Loans from scratch and built it into the nation’s largest online mortgage lender.

He has been a big investor in downtown Detroit, and at the time the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people was released last fall, he had spent $2.2 billion to buy and renovate more than 80 downtown buildings in an area that has emerged as a tech and entertainment hub.

Buffett, who is worth an estimated $62 million, was No. 2 on the Forbes 400 list.