Warren Buffett’s protégé will need some weatherproofing to survive this storm.
Tracy Britt — a 29-year-old exec who is chairman of the billionaire’s Benjamin Moore brand — was forced to fire the paint company’s CEO last month amid allegations that he had harassed female employees, The Post has learned.
To make the situation even stickier, insiders said the ousted CEO, Bob Merritt, a 61-year-old veteran of the restaurant industry, is the husband of Britt’s close friend Jill Dilosa, a 36-year-old Wall Street investor.
“Things have gotten way too cozy at the top for Warren and his cronies, and now it’s biting them on the bottom,” said one source close to the situation.
Indeed, Dilosa — an investing prodigy who was featured on the TV reality series “Wall Street Warriors” in 2006 — attended Britt’s wedding last month in Omaha, Neb., according to sources.
The 83-year-old Buffett, in a show of just how close a working relationship he has with Britt, stood in for the blonde’s late father, and walked Britt down the aisle at that nuptial, local papers reported.
Benjamin Moore and Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s investment conglomerate, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Merritt also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The scandal is the latest blow to Benjamin Moore, whose business lately has been hammered under Buffett’s ownership. In a rare move last summer, Buffett fired former CEO Denis Abrams amid sliding market share and a breakdown in the company’s century-old dealer network.
Buffett installed the Harvard-educated Britt, who joined Berkshire in 2009 as a financial assistant, as Benjamin Moore chairman immediately after he fired Abrams, sources said.
In what proved to be a disastrous move, however, sources said, Britt quickly hired Merritt to replace Abrams — despite or because of her friendship with Dilosa.
“This wasn’t a slow, deliberate process where they hired a search firm and interviewed dozens of candidates,” an insider said.
Britt and Dilosa “are birds of a feather,” not only because of their precocious careers, but also because they are both “fitness junkies,” according to a source.
Benjamin Moore execs initially balked at hiring Merritt because of his lack of experience in the paint industry, and because “he appeared to be in semi-retirement,” according to one source, noting he mostly had held board positions in recent years.
But Merritt soon impressed many Benjamin Moore employees with a “take-no-prisoners” management style as he sought to turn around the company, according to a former exec.
“It’s kind of a shame, because [Merritt] really seemed to want to do the right thing to fix the company,” a source said. “He definitely wasn’t stupid.”
The exec, however, drew complaints for behavior that included“dirty jokes that weren’t appreciated by some of the female employees,” according to the source.