Xerxes

I tend to echo this point of view. I don't have any proof, but my gut feeling is that he never intended to sell BB back in Q1, even if there were no regulatory constraint. Totally, my gut feeling and completely unfounded. Maybe not for personal reason, but perhaps just for a vision that he wants to see through with BB .. and that vision cannot conclude by: saved-by-the-Reddit club. However, if he were to resign next week from BB board, than I think selling the stake is in the cards. Being on the Board of BB as an independent director, or owning a significant chunk of Resolute are supposed to be the "assets" that the FFH should be able to leverage; but sometimes i feel these are more "liabilities". Then again, Prem W. built a +$10 billion business from scratch and has been investments and building businesses for decades; that is many fold more than me, and net-net he has been far more right than wrong, otherwise we wouldn't be here.

Thanks for the in-depth review Hobbit. You are a credit to the Shire; i admit i focused on the bit about the airport mostly. On the incentives shown above, agree that the fees being structured on BVs (and not what the market ascribes) creates all kind of wrong incentives. That being said, as those fees are collected over time, there is an end line where FFH does well out of that paper investment based on what it can do with its marketable value rather than its accounting value.

There are two different things: (1) What is Prem pitching as a global thesis/story for FIH and (2) the reality. The Modi debacle did hurt the (1) argument, however thankfully the reality matter more than an investment thesis/story pitched to investors on conference calls. Modi' ascension some years ago had, I believe, put India on a different trajectory. i.e. there is no going back to the way things were even without Modi in charge. So I think we are safe on that specific front. Perhaps someone from the region can comment.

As a reference point, this 2 hours+ video posted on FIH website, had 719 views (less than a 1,000) since Oct 2020. That shows the level of interest in that part of the world from the investment community. Western corporation may be investing in India, but the investment community had better bargains at home since March 2020 per unit of risk. (1) Canada-India Business Council: Invest India 2020 - YouTube

It is unclear to me if the tender offer will be include FFH tendering its own shares in proportion of its ownership, in which case the 1/3 FFH - 2/3 (rest) ratio does not change. EDIT: Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, the ultimate parent of the Company, has advised the Company that it will not tender any Shares pursuant to the Offer looks like i missed that

BYP did (IIRC) do a tender offer prior the formal offer from BAM some months later. Though that would be robbing FIH individual holders of its potential and should only be of last resort, after all the levers to close the spread has been pulled. In any case, I believe FFH structured its India entities for a specific reason the way it is now. Bottom-line, for me, i have no intention of selling FIH anytime soon. Those who bought in all the fanfare of 2014-16, if they overpaid, than that sets their ROI for the long term. At the end of the day, emerging market is emerging market, if one is unwilling to stay course, why did one got in in the first place.

Perhaps I ought to post this in the book section. I bought this last year based on a suggestion on podcast. It goes over the 1970s but primarily looks at the Great Bull Market of 1982-1999 and the subsequent bust. It is really entertaining, looks at inflation, the 'sadistic' bear of the 1970s that keep despairing the investors, and has lots of good gems in it. Berkshire is there as well (how could it not be). I have not finish it yet, but it is going fast. Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004 eBook: Mahar, Maggie: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

So much for those hoping that FFH have some Grand plan on Resolute, involving restructuring, roll-up etc., and that we, mere mortals, just cannot see the masterpiece taking shape. FFH has some great things going for it, but finding partners for business outsides its area of competencies ain't one of them.

My comment was just a general comment on the first post and not related to anything you had mentioned. Unrelated but related = > Jamie Dimon: JPMorgan is hoarding cash because 'very good chance' inflation here to stay (cnbc.com)

I got no clue of any particular strategy, but as it happens to be, his portfolio has plenty of hard assets that will retain value. I know BRK has been borrowing by issuing long-dated bonds so that is good. It is the lack of having cash and lots of liability that will retain your wealth in a bad inflationary environment and not an abundance of cash. I guess the surplus cash for BRK would be to take advantage of a collapsing equity markets as a consequence of anything (including inflation), but it is not a preparation for inflation, in of itself. I would also distinguish between good inflation and bad inflation. The former (inflation with growth) is what you want and hope for and the latter (inflation with no growth) is what you don't want. If i am not mistaken the last time we had bad inflation in the 1970s, gold went up through a multi-fold monster bull market. That is the type of environment were gold does really well (when real wealth is being eroded). In fact Tobias C., recently on one of his podcast, made the point that the yellow metal that Buffett doesn't care about matched his own returns in the 1970s.

Good thread, I never understood what is the "core" holding in the spaghetti of "tracking" stocks. Even a drunk sailor can safely identify Brookfield's vertebral column: BAM. No such luck with these Malone's entities.

Torstar buyers set to book huge gain as VerticalScope goes public on TSX - The Globe and Mail "VerticalScope Inc. is set to go public Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange at $22 a share, giving the digital media company’s largest shareholder, NordStar Capital LP, a stake valued at $173-million. That is almost three times the $60-million NordStar paid last year for Torstar Corp. (excluding unfunded pension liabilities), which owns the Toronto Star and 76 other daily and weekly newspapers across Ontario and which also included the stake in VerticalScope."

A highly recommend episode on carbon credit (second half). I had listened to Marin's last few episodes from 2018-19, found his views on commodities to be super interesting. This is his fifth appearance on TIP. The Best Performing Asset Is Not Bitcoin w/ Marin Katusa (theinvestorspodcast.com)

Thanks return of capital would be the non-taxable event. But would the adjustment on the equity base for the investor be any different ? vs. the taxable return on capital

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RFP is under equity accounting. The special dividend would be (I think) return of capital therefore lowering its cost base. From 2018 Annual Letter, when RFP last paid a special dividend of $1.5 per share. You see that the $46 million lowered the investment cost from $791 million to $745 million. If it was a regular dividend, would it be return on capital vs. return of capital. Is there an accounting difference in the treatment. I am not sure i know the answer. EDIT: i just remembered an additional point (but i need to verify), the equity earning ought to remove the dividend, so as to not double count since you already have the dividend in the earning stream. Resolute. We have invested $791 million in Resolute and received a special dividend of $46 million, for a net investment cost of $745 million. Our initial investment was a convertible bond purchased in 2008 for $347 million. We invested an additional $131 million prior to Resolute entering into creditor protection and most of the remainder during the period from December 2010 to 2013. Subsequent to write-downs and our share of profits and losses over time, at December 31, 2018 we held our 30.4 million Resolute shares in our books at $300 million ($9.87 per share). The current fair market value of these shares is $244 million ($8.03 per share). You can see that Resolute has been a very poor investment to date

Thanks for the explanation DeepSouth. Unrelated, MSTR said on a SEC filing that its expects at least $284.5 million impairment on its position by close of June 30. Perhaps similar picture will unfold for Tesla, whereby providing an opportunity for those that are interested in Tesla and its actual business (that is if Elon Musk has not been purchasing more BTC through Tesla, after causing a price depression via his tweets)

Amazingly BB has been holding up for almost a week now. LOL... This is unlike the short-term price spike in January.

I actually consider Saylor to be a visionary of a sort. But considering the fact that his company had a flat stock price for 15 years and then boom, i need to also add that he is a very good marketer. But I believe he genuinely believes what he says, I guess that's what it takes to be maximalist. During a Bloomberg interview last week, the host had to ask him twice "why should investors bet on a company' specific capital structure (i.e. MSTR) vs. buying a business that has a growing competitive business that compounds". He couldn't answer. He kept talking about his line about treasuries losing value 20% per year till infinite. 5 years from now, we will look back and see late 2020- early 2021 as "peak liquidity", when baseball cards, limited edition toys, crypto, SPACs all soar, with their proponent painting a future that is set in stone and that was unchangeable. Bitcoin has a future, but in the short term, it is stuck with the "too much liquidity" narrative, and will behave as such. It needs to raise above that.

Wouldn't a large 4X oversubscription push the 6% yield to something much lower ?

My bad, Saylor just threw in $500 million more. He is putting in his last dollars now ! I am unsure if I am mixing the data, but it looks to be junk-bond +6% yield, while the big chunk of debt he issued early 2021, had a very low yield.

If BTC was in up-trend, the news about US Gov recovering the stash from the fraudster would have been seen as positive, in some weird way and the media would be building a narrative around that as to why. In a down market, everything (good or bad) is seen as bad news or at best neutral. Bottom line the news-feed is irrelevant. The maximalist are all in, they put their last major buy in 2020 and early 2021. Saylor is in with his $2B+ exposure, but going forward he can only contribute marginally ($10-15 million at a time ... and not billions). Therefore, that marginal demand that will pull BTC out of the hole has to be new fresh money. I am thinking this will take a good six months before working itself out of the hole. On Mass Mutual, Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller, etc., all I remember was Saylor pumping BTC back in the fall of 2020, keep using these names. I got so use to see his face on TV with that ship-model behind him. Druckenmiller had himself said on record that, his exposure to Bitcoin was taken out of context. If institutional investor brought legitimacy to bitcoin, they also brought with them trader-mentality en masse. Interestingly, it is the retail that is largely buy-and-hold with institutional investors being the "swing-trader". But no worries, I think, the "swing-trader" will be back in 2022. Over the long term, this will be another test that i think Bitcoin will pass and re-bound higher from here. A super interesting video to watch on YouTube is the debate between Saylor and a gold mining executive. It is on YouTube and is called Bitcoin vs. Gold. I highly recommend and was filmed at the height of Bitcoin peak. My respect for gold actually went up after watching it. (2) Bitcoin vs Gold: The Great Debate with Michael Saylor and Frank Giustra - YouTube

hahaha Cheers !

Come one, Blackstone, give me a chance again, this time I promise I will buy !! I will not be stupid this time around.

All great points, however, it goes back to => "sell what you want to sell" vs. "sell what you can sell". In an upmarket, one can do both. Sadly, in a down market, you can only sell what you can sell (best of breed), and wished you had sold what you wanted to sell (but the liquidity is gone now). I wouldn't be so pushy, if the portfolio was not so maxed out on the equity allocation.