Hoodlum

Ahh. That does make sense.

I was reminded of the Kennedy Wilson take private transaction, when I saw the Sun Life Canada announcement this morning where they are expanding further into this area of their investments. They also have management with skin in the game. I am surprised we have not seen other insurance companies expand into real estate, considering the synergies with private credit. https://www.wealthprofessional.ca/investments/alternative-investments/sun-life-tightens-grip-on-alternatives-platform-with-bgo-crescent-buyouts-and-bell-partners-deal/392013 "BGO and Crescent are industry leading businesses and integral to our strategy for Sun Life Asset Management. Both companies create enduring value for our Clients and stakeholders. Together, they bring decades of real estate and credit expertise and deliver high-quality solutions for Clients globally," said Kevin Strain, President and CEO of Sun Life. As part of the new ownership structure, employees across the platform will be able to hold up to 25% through a management equity plan, aligning internal stakeholders with future growth. Alongside the buyouts, Sun Life also unveiled plans to acquire U.S.-based Bell Partners, a multifamily real estate investment manager with roughly US$10bn in assets under management. The US$350m transaction will position Bell Partners as the firm’s U.S. multifamily platform under BGO, adding scale in residential real estate and expanding its operating footprint across key American markets. The transactions highlight a broader push by Sun Life to scale its asset management platform, deepen its alternatives offering, and unlock new growth avenues through global real estate and credit markets.

Here are some more details surrounding this. The upgrade may not necessarily have a positive impact on the Greek stocks. Also, the original German article sourced from yesterday mentioned that it would be announced next Tuesday. Maybe this is a translation issue but saying yesterday "next Tuesday" is not referring to today but Tuesday of next week. At least that is my interpretation. Maybe someone can confirm this German comment from yesterday. Monatelang liefen die Verhandlungen, in denen der Indexbetreiber MSCI mit institutionellen Anlegern diskutierte, ob Griechenland in die Klasse der entwickelten Märkte heraufgestuft wird. Am kommenden Dienstag folgt nun die Bekanntgabe der Entscheidung. https://www.dw.com/el/πιθανή-αναβάθμιση-χα-ωφελημένοι-και-χαμένοι/a-76600145

Trump can only control short-term rates. Long bond yields may actually rise in tandem, if the bond market believes the rate cuts would stoke inflation further. This could actually help increase US government borrowing costs.

Metlen shares dropped 10% on Friday due to a 9 day delay in releasing the FY25 results, related to complexities of their first reporting as a dual listed company. https://www.metlen.com/media/eppcpz2y/260327_announcement_en_final.pdf

This is the funniest part of this whole conflict. I am surprised this doesn't get played up more than it does.

Britt is adding new capacity for Cargo insurance. https://www.reinsurancene.ws/rsa-and-brit-launch-global-project-cargo-consortium-build-with-285m-capacity/ RSA Insurance’s UK Specialty Lines business and Brit Ltd have joined forces to unveil ‘BUILD,’ a Project Cargo consortium that stands as one of the largest in the global cargo market. Open for business, this consortium offers a guaranteed capacity of up to USD 285 million for Project Cargo risks on a worldwide scale. Project Cargo insurance addresses the cover and protection needs for equipment susceptible to loss or damage during transit.

And here are some details on the acquisition process. https://www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2026/03/17/london-indian-restaurant-veeraswamy-celebrates-its-100th-birthday-aid-legal-dispute-with-the-crown-estate/

Some interesting details were revealed by Prem at last weeks Centenary Celebratory dinner at Veeraswamy, MW Eat will now pursue global growth. Watsa wants to bring its top restaurants to Canada, the U.S., the Gulf and elsewhere. He envisages a 10-fold growth in sales in a decade and having “30 or 40” Masala Zones in Canada, Mathrani says. Watsa talks of “building it slowly over time” and has asked the founders to stay on as advisers and help to recruit new leaders for this phase.

it will be interesting to see what the mid-term impact will be for oil and natural gas production, once the conflict ends. This conflict seems to have had a more material impact on middle east production than prior conflicts.

The impact from this conflict will last years. Qatar is the worlds 2nd largest natural gas producer and they just announced that 17% of their production has been impacted and will require 3-5 years to rebuild to bring back on line. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/iran-attack-damage-wipes-out-17-qatars-lng-capacity-three-five-years-qatarenergy-2026-03-19/

They are now considering an OFS (Offer for Sale) to add more liquidity and then go back to bidding process again. Not surprisingly, the IDBI stock dropped another 5% on that news. The government seems to be grasping at straws to try and get a higher sale price. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/banking/govt-may-consider-ofs-option-for-raising-public-float-in-idbi-bank/articleshow/129731549.cms?from=mdr The government may consider selling a stake in IDBI Bank through the Offer-for-Sale (OFS) route to increase public shareholding, after the unsuccessful attempt to divest stake in the LIC-controlled lender, sources said. Currently, the public float in IDBI Bank is only 5.29 per cent, limiting the scope of fair valuation. Low free float restricts the scope for fair market valuation, and expanding this to 10 per cent or 15 per cent would make price discovery more reliable, sources said. It can provide a reliable benchmark for valuation and further make the price discovery process transparent, they said, adding, strategic sale can be pursued even after one or two tranches of OFS.

This short interview was done before AGT Q1 results were released. I hadn't realized that the GLP-1 drug requires more protein to be consumed (1-1.5g of protein per kg of weight), in order to be effective. https://www.620ckrm.com/2026/03/21/agt-foods-goes-public-in-bid-to-scale-business/ Yellow pea protein is going into oatmeal in the United States, and AGT’s Veggipasta is in all the Whole Food stores there. “We’re launching additional SKUs (stock keeping units) in the U.S. retail now that are going to be lentil and chickpea, lentil and pea, chickpea and pea,” said Al-Katib. “We won the contract to produce pasta that’s being sold in Costco USA now: pea, lentil and cauliflower; pea, lentil and sweet potato, pea, lentil and spinach.” He said major growth plus low leverage equal a successful global business. Al-Katib also said GLP-1 drugs are going to be an “earthquake” in the food industry. If a food company doesn’t react, it will be destroyed by the trend in dietary fibre and protein. The patents on these medications are soon running out and costs will come down, he said. More access to them will lead to less food volume consumed and the shift to fibre and protein, he said.

Large 280k shares traded today with what looks like 128k shares traded at the close.

I couldn't find that in the transcript.

That was quite the spike today for all treasury terms. We may see 5% again for the 30 year very soon. I believe this rise in yield is mainly due to the war but I don't think the bond or equity markets have fully anticipated the downstream impacts of the huge increases in Memory prices over the past 6-12 months. This impacts everything from consumers devices, vehicles, Security/networking and hosting services. I have started to see this with security/network device deals that are getting push out by months on previously agreed on deals as pricing is out of whack now. The choice for the business is to pay more now to get the product, cancel order or delay for 12-18 months and hope that prices come down next year. Anyone hosting services will start to see big monthly increases which then needs to be passed on. This is going to cause inflation, along with companies pulling back on planned projects involving hardware/service upgrades. The increase in the oil price only adds to this.

I believe Fairfax was also a bit lucky with the timing of the Stelco sale. If they had waited another 6-8 months, that would put it at the beginning of the trade wars and there is no chance that it could have been sold since then. Stelco would also have seen significant losses with Fairfax possibly needing to inject funds. Sometime you need to have some luck.

thanks @Viking do we know what the duration was at year end. I don’t remember seeing that in the annual report.

Here are some details of the reserve price and bids. Both were lower than the market suggested. IDBI shares dropped again today, close to a 2 year low. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/after-2-attempts-govt-fails-to-divest-idbi-bank/amp_articleshow/129666304.cms Those familiar with the sale process said that bidders and transaction advisors estimated the book value of shares at around Rs 55-60, against the reported book value of Rs 67, prompting Kotak Mahindra to back out The reserve price was fixed at over Rs 94 a share - a 41% premium to book value. Regarding the bids by Fairfax and Emirates NBD, which were rejected, one was said to be at 10% discount to the current book value, while the other was at a 10-12% premium. What complicated the matter for the committee of secretaries, which took a call on rejecting the bids, was the market price of IDBI shares, which soared 59% from under Rs 73 a year ago to over Rs 116 on Feb 27. With a 5.3% public float, it did not take significant volumes to be traded for the share to move up or down and market players raised the price in anticipation of the sale.

IDBI bank stock price is now down over 20% in past 2 days, back to where it was a year ago.

Thanks @jeyfox for posting these changes in ownership as it is interesting to see how this is evolving for some of the smaller insurance subs that we don’t normally hear about. We know that Allied and Odyssey minority interests will eventually be bought out. It would be nice if Fairfax could buy out the remaining 3% interest of GIG, but I don’t know what that would take as they were offered 2x book and turned that down. I did a little digging on Pacific Insurance (Malaysia) and noticed that Fairfax reported owning 100% in the 2015 annual report but then dropped to 85% in the 2016 report. I could not find anything to know what caused this drop in ownership. I am curious what happened to that 15%.

So just the same as any other update. Thanks

Mr. Horn provided another update today, although I am unable to see it. https://www.morningstar.com/company-reports/1456919-fairfax-has-been-buoyed-by-strong-market-conditions-and-some-smart-bets

Thanks @Viking I was using effective share count for both BV and earnings and understand this better now.

I always though that the minimum bid needed was susceptible to speculation based on the below requirements. The below makes sense for someone initiating a acquisition of a public company, but not for a state acquisition where the bids don't arrive until late in the process and then need to account for the stock being driven up over a long period prior to the bid being placed. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/dipam-sets-february-5-deadline-for-final-idbi-bank-bids-13800733.html Given that IDBI Bank is a listed entity, the final bid price is expected to reflect the acquisition price applicable for takeovers as per Sebi norms. This means that the H1 or highest bid will be the highest among the negotiated price, volume-weighted average price (VWAP) in the past 52 weeks, highest price at which the stock traded in in the past 26 weeks or the 60-day VWAP.