Warren Buffett Bought an Indiana RV Maker and Let the CEO Name His Own Salary—Whatever It Was, He'd Pay It. 'This Is Not an Approach I Recommend'

Warren Buffett once bought a $1.7 billion company over the phone. Another time, he wired billions for a business he never visited, because he didn’t feel like getting on a plane.

So when he told an RV executive, “You name your salary, and I’ll pay it,” it wasn’t out of character. But it was still extraordinary.

In his 2024 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett shared the story of Pete Liegl, the late founder of Indiana-based RV manufacturer Forest River. Liegl wasn’t a household name, but Buffett credits him with generating “many billions” in wealth for shareholders—and considers the deal one of his best.

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Buffett first heard about Forest River in a letter. Liegl owned 100% of the company and wanted to sell. He even named his price upfront. Buffett liked the simplicity. After asking a few RV dealers about Forest River’s reputation and liking what he heard, he invited Liegl to Omaha, Nebraska, for a meeting.

What followed was classic Buffett: no games, no appraisals, no drawn-out negotiations.

When the topic of salary came up, Buffett asked Liegl what he wanted to be paid and told him that whatever number he gave, he’d accept it.

“I asked Pete what his compensation should be, adding that whatever he said, I would accept,” Buffett wrote. “This, I should add, is not an approach I recommend for general use.”

Liegl didn’t ask for millions. Instead, he requested $100,000 per year—the same salary Buffett took as Berkshire’s CEO for decades. Then he added a 10% bonus on profits above the current run rate. Buffett said yes without blinking.

The deal was sealed. No one-lawyer-per-minute fee. No spreadsheet battles over earnouts. And no drama later. “Those vague terms never caused a problem,” Buffett wrote.

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Buffett is famously allergic to complexity. He prefers simple businesses, simple math, and people he can trust. He’s made deals in minutes, often without leaving Nebraska, because what matters most to him isn’t a perfect pitch deck—it’s character and accounting.

And in Liegl, he found both.

After the deal closed, Liegl stayed on and ran Forest River for nearly two decades. According to Buffett, he “shot the lights out” and outperformed every competitor. He kept working until his death in 2024 at age 80.

Buffett doesn’t often praise by name. But this time, he made an exception. “Pete Liegl was a natural,” he wrote.

Buffett also used the story to reinforce one of his oldest beliefs: credentials don’t matter nearly as much as competence. “I never look at where a candidate has gone to school. Never,” he wrote. Instead, he values raw talent, sound judgment, and integrity—traits he saw in Liegl.

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That philosophy has led him to buy companies without seeing the factory floor, skip formal site visits, and rely almost entirely on what the numbers—and his gut—tell him.

Liegl had the numbers. Buffett had the gut.

Buffett admits he’s made mistakes—bad acquisitions, poor judgment calls, overconfidence in people who didn’t deserve it. But Forest River wasn’t one of them. It was the kind of decision that makes up for all the rest.

“Mistakes fade away; winners can forever blossom,” he wrote.

Liegl, by Buffett’s account, was one of the biggest winners in Berkshire’s history—and all it took to get the deal done was a letter, a handshake, and a number scribbled on a page.

No one needed a second opinion.

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This article Warren Buffett Bought an Indiana RV Maker and Let the CEO Name His Own Salary—Whatever It Was, He'd Pay It. 'This Is Not an Approach I Recommend' originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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