nwoodman

I believe they hold 2,807,463,858 shares and purchased them for 0.1 Euro's each http://www.bankofireland.com/fs/doc/publications/market-news-and-analysis/tr1-notification-fairfax-12-12-13.pdf http://www.lse.co.uk/SharePrice.asp?shareprice=BKIR&share=bank_ireland I would advise steering clear of the LSE chat group as there is a lot of day trading whackiness and aspirational pricing going on ;) Cheers nwoodman

Great article and really enforces the fact that Heins was way out of his league. The fact that Prem backed Heins in the first place is still a mystery to me. The little I have read about Chen certainly gives me hope and hasn't left me squirming the way Heins used to http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/11/04/5-funniest-things-ex-blackberry-ceo-thorsten-heins-said/ The older I get the more I have come to realise the importance of good management in the overall puzzle. Hopefully Prem's quote comes true and Chen's reputation only grows

Gio so glad it worked out and thanks for sharing. I thought about this thread a few times today and it made me smile. It is an amazing community and culture that Parsad has fostered cheers nwoodman

I am sure you will shoot the lights out just by being your usual enthusiastic, intelligent, thoughtful self. I hope it goes well and enjoy every moment. cheers nwoodman

I am looking forward to to this http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/exclusive-watch-billionaire-steven-cohen-stumble-over-insider-trading-rules/ Coming this winter, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith (The Untouchables, The Retirement Gamble, Money, Power and Wall Street) and producer Nick Verbitsky examine how prosecutors have set their sights on the hedge fund industry. In the process, they’ve dug into the operations and mind-set of billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen. FRONTLINE has exclusively obtained a video deposition in which Cohen, who is rarely seen on camera, addresses these issues. He describes federal insider trading laws as "vague," his firm's own trading rules as "general guidelines" and says he gives his traders latitude to use their judgment while making deals.

That made my day, thanks for posting ;D Hopefully it sets a healthy precedent for any further action by Fairfax

Very helpful, many thanks nwoodman

I wasn't sure where to put this one as it is relevant to a lot of the threads currently under way ;D http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/patent-war-goes-nuclear-microsoft-app Canada-based telecom Nortel went bankrupt in 2009 and sold its biggest asset—a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents covering 4G wireless innovations and a range of technologies—at an auction in 2011. Google bid for the patents, but it didn't get them. Instead, the patents went to a group of competitors—Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony—operating under the name "Rockstar Bidco." The companies together bid the shocking sum of $4.5 billion. Patent insiders knew that the Nortel portfolio was the patent equivalent of a nuclear stockpile: dangerous in the wrong hands, and a bit scary even if held by a "responsible" party. This afternoon, that stockpile was finally used for what pretty much everyone suspected it would be used for—launching an all-out patent attack on Google and Android. The smartphone patent wars have been underway for a few years now, and the eight lawsuits filed in federal court today by Rockstar Consortium mean that the conflict just hit DEFCON 1.

The QNA and only the QNA :) cheers nwoodman rec_+18008795206_02_Nov_2013_02_41_34.mp3

Thanks Gio, the models are appreciated. Not surprisingly they mirror my view of investing and results. Periods of not much, followed by FX hits (in my case) and capital declines, followed by feelings of I'm a genius, followed by oh $#$%. However over time, the NAV moves forward at an acceptable rate. The constant reminder is never play this game with leverage. I take my hat off to the Erics and Parsad's of the worlds that can make money from that kind of (time based) strategy. However, I am just a simple engineer (like you I believe) and margin of safety (value and time) must always apply. We must also be careful in this endeavor as group think is the biggest challenge we face :)

"Alot of people here make too many excuses for FFH". Hey Uccmal, I always appreciate your thoughts (along with everyone else who contributes) and you may well be right. This quarterly loss certainly caught me off guard, so if you saw it coming then well done. I figured a wash to a small loss for this quarter, so my modelling needs some revising :-[ However even after the biggest quarterly loss I have experienced as an owner, they are still only trading at 1.3 x's book and will probably trade somewhat lower shortly. I have my view that this company is undervalued at 1x's book and fair value at 1.5x's book. How do you value them especially in a hardening market for insurance and where the broader market is stretched?

Currently around 40% of my portfolio, after trimming some BRK and BAC. I will only consider selling FFH if the bid gets to > 1.5x's book (which I hope it doesn't)

2.8 bn (2,807,463,858)

Absolutely, you can back it in. I get the impression that Jain's actions are the passive aggressive version of of NI's sharpening pencils cheers nwoodman

Many thanks. That guys writing style makes my head hurt but some interesting observations nonetheless cheers nwoodman

A great interview with Australian Fund Manager, Matt Mclennan, who runs about $80b at First Eagle http://www.afr.com/p/business/financial_services/interview_transcript_first_eagle_qgIOfuxoKGFCgUuKQDbUaM I particularly liked this section on Aussie banks and the housing sector: Q: Australia’s banking sector accounts for about 30 per cent of the sharemarket index and the majors rank among some of the most profitable institutions in the world. Are you investors? "We haven’t been investors in the Aussie major banks because the raw equity-to-asset ratios, as opposed to the ratios calculated using risk-weighted assets, are lower than our comfort zone. We also haven’t been there because there is an element of dependence on wholesale funding in the business model. We’ve felt that it’s been a pretty good time for Australia – there has been a fair amount of cumulative credit growth over the last generation – and if you look at the reserves-to-loan losses inside the banks it’s pretty low in the scheme of things. A lot of people would argue it’s been a successful, oligopolistic, and well-regulated market. But the risk-reward for us investing in an environment where the private sector has built fairly high levels of debt and the structural tailwinds for the economy are becoming structural headwinds, has made it non-compelling for us to spend a lot of time there. There are better non-brainer opportunities for us around the world. We’ve also had limited investments in banks as a whole because we’ve had a fairly healthy scepticism for the world’s financial architecture. Where we have invested in banks they typically have conservative loan-to-deposit ratios, high equity-to-assets ratios, and lower leverage than what you find in Australia. We like banks that focus on regional lending with wide net interest margins and which have big fee earning businesses attached to their balance sheets. Those are hard to find, and so banks have not been a big feature in our portfolio." Q: You are clearly very knowledgeable on the Australian economy – what are your views on the resurgent Aussie housing market? It is interesting to me when you hear a politician [recently Joe Hockey] saying this is not a housing bubble – that is just a supply-constrained market. At the end of the day, I think the Australian housing market is instinctively on the full side of fair value in a situation where the natural constituency, the marginal buyer, is already quite levered. I don’t understand why people feel the need to say a market is not in a bubble. I don’t think that’s a prudent approach when you see large levels of leverage and fairly low rental yields. While I get it that you want to support confidence, I don’t know what the upside is in talking down legitimate risks. We’ve always made money by not losing money. Ultimately you feel far more confident when a management team tells you what it is worried about than when it displays complacency. ------------- For those that are interested this was the "we're different" interview with Australian Treasurer, Joe Hockey, that is referred to above http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/10/in-new-york-hockey-defends-housing-bubble/

at least by my calculations. cheers nwoodman

I thought the recent commentary from Market Scout was interesting. Overall rates for P&C were up around 5 % but the report notes the following: "Richard Kerr, CEO of MarketScout profiled the September market conditions by noting, “There are several medium sized publicly traded insurance companies who are encountering challenges in their ongoing business operations. These companies may be sold, restructured, or placed into run off unless they structure some creative solutions to get them past their current financial crisis. Very capable, smart insurance executives lead each of these firms. It just goes to show how quickly things can go wrong if an insurer experiences adverse loss development. Rates will increase if a few more companies experience similar deterioration.” http://new2.marketscout.com/zBarometerCommercial.php Does anyone know the insurers he is referring to? I would imagine Tower is one of them http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/07/fitch-downgrades-tower-group-on-reserve-idUSFit67244920131007 Cheers nwoodman

Many thanks. They certainly are sticking to their debt deflation view of the world "Economic growth should be very poor in the final months of 2013. Growth is unlikely to exceed 1%, even less than the already anemic 1.6% rate of growth in the past four quarters. Marked improvement in 2014 is also questionable." Cheers nwoodman

A mediocre translation. http://tinyurl.com/n4y4etd Cheers nwoodman

Another word starting with "f" springs to mind. At least Prem is holding to his word and won't sink more cash into the deal. Thanks for posting as this was my biggest worry cheers nwoodman

Oh! Foul company. An undeclared trace of milk in one of their bon bons. What a nanny state we have become. I'll give you a free pass on this as I normally respect your opinion. As a parent of a child with serious allergies, believe me, this is is serious stuff. Cheers nwoodman

The thought also crossed my mind but I couldn't see any concentrated positions they hold that I would be interested in. http://whalewisdom.com/filer/sac-capital-advisors-lp in fact it looks like they are deliberately running a lack of concentrated positions, at least as far as their 13f is concerned cheers nwoodman

Bill Gates has been visiting the merry old land of Oz. 7:30 Report http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3769375.htm Q&A http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3761763.htm cheers nwoodman

Nice! We had relatives up on the plateau that then moved to Whale Beach. So I agree with both of you, it is a cracking part of the world. I hooked the biggest flathead of my fishing career in Pittwater :) Spent a wonderful Christmas eating and drinking and enjoying the view out to Whale Beach prior to my first Sydney to Hobart. Happy Days! If that is the plan Eric, it is a good one and richly deserved. cheers nwoodman