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NV Energy-Buffett deal nets big proceeds for board of directors

Nati Harnik / AP

In this May 2, 2011, file photo, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, gestures during an interview in Omaha, Neb.

Warren Buffett’s purchase of NV Energy will be a financial bonanza to the utility's stockholders, and the board of directors is no exception.

Filings with the Securities Exchange Commission show that each of the Las Vegas power company’s 10 board members holds tens of thousands of shares in the utility and is poised to cash in big on Buffett. His MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. reached a deal in late May to buy NV Energy for $23.75 per share, or $5.6 billion cash.

NV Energy President and CEO Michael Yackira, one of the highest-paid executives in the valley, will collect $21.2 million from the buyout, far more than the other board members. He's followed by Chairman Philip Satre at $2.7 million, former Station Casinos executive Glenn Christenson at $2.5 million and Las Vegas attorney John O’Reilly at $2 million, according to a filing last month with the SEC.

Don Snyder, a former casino and banking executive, will net $994,745 from the sale; gold-mining executive Brian Kennedy, $877,111; Maureen Mullarkey, a former executive with slot-machine maker International Game Technology, $832,366; utility industry veteran Stephen Frank, $696,136; Florida lawyer Susan Clark, $672,434; and Michigan manufacturing executive Joseph Anderson Jr., $575,629.

NV Energy and MidAmerican executives approved the purchase May 29. Investors cheered the news, sending NV Energy’s stock soaring 22.5 percent the next day.

Iowa-based MidAmerican, owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, is expected to complete the buyout in the first quarter of 2014. Buffett has become one of the wealthiest men in the world buying steady, if not boring, companies such as insurance carriers and utilities.

He typically keeps executives in place to run things as usual, and the same is expected for NV Energy.

When the sale was announced, Yackira said MidAmerican's "track record is not to have layoffs" when buying other companies and that he expects to remain in his job alongside other current executives.

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