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If Peller has a great plan to develop real estate but miss the capital then I begin to see a similarity in some of the last acquisitions. Find a good leader with a great project searching for capital which FFH can provide. Strathcona, Sleep with is expansion in US, Poseidon seems to have that common caracteristic.

Lets hope it will at least end the post with "Compute!?"

BG, BOLSY, ICE and MIAX Wrote puts on CPB Thanks Lance

Let's just say I'm always an optimist. But gotta think that any progress is better than where we were at. Hopeful that somehow, some way Iran and its future leadership has a desire to participate with the free World in the 21st century. My personal objective echoes that of Israel - regime change, but no preconceived notion that it will happen anytime soon.

Maybe this will help folks understand of hard/soft market cycles. Insurance market "hard vs soft" is identical to stock market "bull vs bear". Bull Market = Soft Market attitudes, Bear Market = Hard Market attitudes. In a Soft market, underwriters lose their minds, make irrational decisions with regards to fundamentals, no fear - everything is rosy, care free, underwriters say "YES" alot and "everyone is making money" attitude persists. In a soft market, the old school underwriters say "this can not go on forever" and the new guys say "you guys are dinosaurs, we are killing it".....until the roof falls in...or doesn't...thats the bet. Soft market means terms conditions get sweeter and price goes down = bad equation for insurance companies. and brokers have a field day because they are getting BETTER market execution for their clients albeit commission revenue does compress HOWEVER good brokers can sell more product into a soft market cycle. In a soft market, as a broker you just send an underwriter a competitor quote and say "youre gonna let this other idiot make all the money?" BOOM, they match or beat the price and in many cases they will increase the commission to sell their deal. Brokers really don't do a good job in soft markets for their clients because price alone is what the clients care about but a good broker can enhance the terms and conditions to the paper contract in a soft market with ease. A Hard market on the other hand, underwriters set the price, terms, conditions cause they know they are winning. Imagine being an underwriter for financial D&O for banks in 2007. You could put out quotes with a bankruptcy exclusion for a bank in a D&O policy and win! That defines what underwriters CAN DO in a hard market. Hard market you can put a roof exclusion on a property policy and client will still buy it. NUTZ right? Buyers/Brokers loose their minds in a hard market because things get tough, every underwriter says no. Gotta stick with your partners through the cycles. Its an amazing game. Mr. Buffett wins in a hard market. because he knows the risk is the same, its just he can charge more in a hard market. Think of it this way, does the hurricane know its a hard market when its coming to Florida or Texas? The hurricane doesn't care! It's coming (or not coming) just the same. The odds are the same either way, its the capacity being put into the market that drives drive up or down, hard or soft. Its just like stocks, the market doesn't know what you paid for the stock as much as you stare at it and fondle it, the price of the equity will go where it goes based on fear and greed or fundamentals of a good/great business. Just like the insurance cycles hard vs. soft. A good risk is a good risk whether its a hard or soft market, good risks just get better execution. ALL stock brokers look like kings in a bull market, just like insurance brokers look like kings in a soft market. The inverse its true as well for bear market/hard market. Dumb money shows up in a soft market. Smart money waits for the hard market. They very much rhyme.

I think it’s unlikely they would do the deal if they didn’t think it would meet their hurdle. That’s not to say it will but I assume they have a plan. FCF is a decent amount higher than earnings because of the amortization of intangibles and if they are overcapitalized then they could dividend out a decent amount of the purchase price which immediately improves the return.

you think? What’s your blue sky scenario from here?

Thanks for the info and the idea.

Can't even begin to form an opinion here because we have just now begun negotiating. But it has the potential to be about much more than just nuclear.

Sold MDLZ,NOMD, DOM. I want to lean more into high growth stocks with great balance sheet and really great businesses in the future.

Thanks.

Well that's my point exactly.....we left the negotiating table in Feb in frustration to get what we want via militarily force.....to only end up where we started back at the negotiating table talking about the same stuff as before (i.e. the military campaign/blockade didn't conclude with deal but with a negotiation).....it really speaks to a military campaign that fundamentally failed to change the calculus on the ground. I mean let's wait and see the details on whats on the table now re:nuclear vs. the Feb Geneva baseline - however all reporting suggests essentially no incrementalism versus what could have been signed in Geneva with serious changes to status quo ante in the region that I've discussed before which essentially boils down to Iran's strategic & relative power in the region enhanced via the SOH control/deterrent demonstration, the illusion of the US security umbrella in the region degraded such that stakeholders there are inevitably going to hedge their tail risk via side deals with Tehran and broadly speaking if you believed the Islamic revolution was slowly failing inside Iran (some evidence of that) I can make an argument here that Epic Fury has breathed new life into the theocracy morphing it into a military junta (with $300bn soon to disburse). Not over till the nuclear deal fat lady sings........but the juice was not worth the squeeze here and that's being kind. Its looking like the blunder of blunders here in T2.

The Monty Python Black Knight speaks.. @dwy000 Ayatollah dead Half the IRGC leaders dead Air defenses destroyed Air Force destroyed Navy destroyed Nuclear facilities destroyed Arms manufacturing destroyed Currency worthless Inflation 100%+ Iran is in fine shape

Hard to respond when someone contends that an appropriate answer to "Death to America" is............................nothing.

If the evidence fits! There is literally nothing Trump could do that you would claim is bad. Tell me, do you still support the caps on overdraft fees that Trump removed? Cult.

Back to Whoppner! LOL!!!!!!

What a cult!!! The fact that our current best option is vastly worse than having done nothing and youre tyring to hold it up as a win just shows how deeply the cult runs. We are going to release $bns, set up a $300bn fund for them, agree to get out of dodge, give up and reverse all sanctions and it has cost us $25bn and multiple lives in exchange for absolutely nothing - and youre spinning this as a win. Wow.

I will be engineering an AI version of myself, not so different than Zuckerberg's clone. That way, the site will keep running long after I'm gone. The new AI clone will be able to scrape the site and provide you all the information you need when you do a search. It will be so amazing, that you won't be able to tell the difference between the clone and myself. You may actually be speaking to it right now. My body will become one with the COBF website. Like Fairfax and Berkshire, the site is built to last for 100 years! The new clone will have one differentiating feature that many of you will love...it will never put "Cheers!" on the end of every post!

So evidently your preferred "solution" was that of our friends and neighbors to the North and East - bury your head in the sand and ignore the problem. Thank goodness we have a President and Administration who thinks differently. But keep on exercising your right as an American to keep on criticizing!

My thinking is similar. They are unlikely to make 15% with this investment but if they establish themselves as reliable partners for retiring owners of good assets with steady returns, they might be able to do the kind of deals Buffett wished he could do but which Berkshire had become too big for. Fairfax can stay small for longer as Watsa has got the Singleton buyback religion far earlier than Buffett did, and this could be a competitive advantage for Fairfax.

Imagine how horrible you would feel if you live in Iran where your currency is worthless and you are operating on a barter economy - with no friends to speak of coming to your rescue. Here in the US, nothing has changed, except libtards losing their minds and cheering on Iran.

I dont have a better solution. Im not a middle east expert. But as an American Im very much allowed to opine on how utterly horrible and embarrassing this solution is. And the fact that this might be the best option only reiterates how incompetent the administration who painted us into this corner is.

So, first of all, Holcim had to do it. What I think is incremental is that Holcim is planning to tender for ALL of the shares. Depending on the exchange rate, around $13 per ADR, however I wonder whether the local pension funds may ask for a higher price given the incredible Q1 results, and Holcim's statements at an investor conference (according to a research report that I read) that the synergies will be higher than forecast.

Still waiting for your better idea as to how to solve the Iran problem. Monday morning quarterbacks are worth what they're paid.

We are not "paying" them is a technicality. We are releasing restricted funds back them. From their perspective they are receiving $bns of dollars for just coming to the table. The fact that we are arguing over how terrible this is and whether there are "better ideas" for a situation that we should not even be in is ridiculous. Its mind boggling incompetence.