«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

The Playboy Mansion, the 29-room home, movie studio and corporate throne of Playboy Enterprises Inc. founder Hugh Hefner, is worth $54 million, or 45 times what the publisher claimed on its books, a shareholder lawsuit said. Hefner, 84, and Playboy Enterprises are hiding the true value of the company’s assets in an effort to take it private without paying a fair price for the minority stake that Hefner doesn’t own, according to an amended complaint filed Feb. 4 in Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington.The information sent to minority shareholders describing the deal “seems designed to intentionally mislead, or at a minimum, confuse Playboy’s public shareholders,” lawyers for the shareholders, Charles A. Germershausen and Feivel Gottlieb, said in the complaint.

-Bloomberg