Money and Finance
- Links
The Audible Daily Deal looks like an interesting course from The Great Courses (for $3.95): How Ideas Spread (The lecturer also wrote a book on these ideas: Contagious: Why Things Catch On) Follow Buffett Reinsurance Guru’s Sage Advice...
- Warren Buffett On Cnbc
Links to videos: Berkshire Hathaway celebrates 50 years Who will succeed Warren Buffett? #Ask Warren: Charlie Munger No surprises at IBM: Buffett Deere's long term attraction: Buffett #Ask Warren: Glenn Close What's inside Berkshire Hathaway?...
- Berkshire Hathaway Buys Back $1.2 Billion Of Class A Stock
With the share repurchase ceiling increased to 120% of book value, Berkshire can now buy back A shares up to a little over $134,000 per share, and B shares up to a little over $89 per share. Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK-A) spent $1.2 billion buying back...
- Buffett's Latest Bargain: Berkshire Hathaway
For all the adulation he receives, Warren Buffett isn't getting credit where it arguably counts the most: his company's share price. Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares trade around $128,000 a share. While that's a big number, it's...
- Ajit Jain On Cnbc
Berkshire Hathaway shocked the world when it jumped into the bond insurance business, and Ajit Jain, president of the reinsurance and specialty risk division at Berkshire Hathaway, discusses the new venture. (Video) ...
Money and Finance
Jain feeds Buffett’s hunger
I'm a bit late getting to this, but thanks to those who passed the link along.
The first signs of a new Ajit Jain came at the January 2012 renewals, when the potential heir to Buffett played big on Australasian cat and international retro.
Jain took a large share of the IAG property cat treaty that had handed painful losses on to the pre-existing markets. It looked like classic Jain: hundreds of millions of dollars of capacity thrown at the feet of a cedant that was struggling for capacity. In hindsight, it became clear that it was the first in a series of mammoth cat and multi-line deals with cedants from Asia Pacific.
IAG was followed by a hefty (and uncapped) retro quota share for Asia Capital Re; next came some aggressive Japanese quake pro rata deals and a gargantuan quota share with Toa Re.
After Berkshire Hathaway made its presence felt during the Indian renewals, the New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) was next as the reinsurer came from a standing start to write a NZ$500mn line to help the programme expand substantially.
By far the most prominent deal in Jain's Asia Pacific push was made with loss-hit Australasian cedant Suncorp. Berkshire ramped its line on the main programme up to around $800mn, hoovered up the entire New Zealand buy-down protection and wrote a $300mn-premium quota share of Suncorp's Queensland homeowners' book. It is believed all of this was written for a three-year period.
And this agreement overshadowed a multi-year deal with Berkshire that took the whole of New Zealand insurer AMI's NZ$1.4bn cat programme out of the market, denying resentful loss-paying markets the chance to earn their payback.
At the beginning of 2013 Berkshire filled in the final piece of its Australasian strategy by striking a deal with QBE to write 15 percent shares of a range of its programmes, including the company's $1.3bn global cat treaty and its global aggregate cover.
All in all, Berkshire Hathaway is thought to have swollen its Asia Pacific writing by between $1.5bn and $2bn in this period of frenzied activity, with most of this coming through multi-line uncapped quota shares or cat excess-of-loss business.
- Links
The Audible Daily Deal looks like an interesting course from The Great Courses (for $3.95): How Ideas Spread (The lecturer also wrote a book on these ideas: Contagious: Why Things Catch On) Follow Buffett Reinsurance Guru’s Sage Advice...
- Warren Buffett On Cnbc
Links to videos: Berkshire Hathaway celebrates 50 years Who will succeed Warren Buffett? #Ask Warren: Charlie Munger No surprises at IBM: Buffett Deere's long term attraction: Buffett #Ask Warren: Glenn Close What's inside Berkshire Hathaway?...
- Berkshire Hathaway Buys Back $1.2 Billion Of Class A Stock
With the share repurchase ceiling increased to 120% of book value, Berkshire can now buy back A shares up to a little over $134,000 per share, and B shares up to a little over $89 per share. Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK-A) spent $1.2 billion buying back...
- Buffett's Latest Bargain: Berkshire Hathaway
For all the adulation he receives, Warren Buffett isn't getting credit where it arguably counts the most: his company's share price. Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares trade around $128,000 a share. While that's a big number, it's...
- Ajit Jain On Cnbc
Berkshire Hathaway shocked the world when it jumped into the bond insurance business, and Ajit Jain, president of the reinsurance and specialty risk division at Berkshire Hathaway, discusses the new venture. (Video) ...