gfp

I have experience, but they are very different in each market / municipality. You would want to get advice from someone who has done it in your exact market - or a title attorney who works with clients involved in tax lien sales regularly. In New Orleans there are 3 different (at least) types and the rules and risks are different for each. Generally, I have heard the rules are favorable for investors in some areas of Florida, but where I live it's not a great deal for the most part.

Thank You No luck. Only thing I am able to pull is for them is in the 60s. can you post an pdf of the document? Please? 239382082-Geico-1991-Annual-Report.pdf

Cash out 30 year home mortgage refi is about the best you can do for an individual. You pay interest starting now, but it's crazy cheap and tax deductible in the United States. Berkshire / Heinz / Kraft selling bonds the last few days is about the best you can do if you are an institution.

I've been adding as it dips below 140. Would love it if BRK stayed low as lots of cash comes in from arbs in the next week or so. BH, DTV, a lot of deals about to close.

It depends on how the Heinz write-up is handled. Last report had Book at about $98 per B share. Current book could be anywhere from 98 to 105 per B share, but the HNZ deal won't close in the 2nd quarter, so the jump could come in Q3.

How did you arrive at 11%? I get something like 8% plus a half year of the SPX dividend yield

I think it mainly reflects the fact that Berkshire didn't decline as much in the financial crisis. So 5 years captures only the recovery from the crisis price levels on the index. If you select 4 years Berkshire outperforms. 3 years Berkshire outperforms, 10 years Berkshire outperforms, etc...

Just had a brief look so I could be missing something, but I don't believe they are paying cash taxes. "During the year ended December 31, 2014, the provision for income taxes increased to approximately $34.8 million compared to approximately $28.7 million for 2013. The increase in tax provision was due to the impairment of long-lived intangible assets that reduced the deferred tax liabilities (“DTLs”) and related deferred tax expense for 2013. For the year ended December 31, 2014, the income tax provision consisted of deferred tax expense of approximately $34.3 million related to temporary differences due to tax amortization of indefinite-lived intangible assets, and current provision expense of approximately $558,000. For the year ended December 31, 2013, the income tax provision consisted of deferred tax expense of approximately $27.3 million related to temporary differences due to tax amortization of indefinite-lived intangible assets, and current provision expense of approximately $1.4 million. The reduction of current tax expense was primarily attributable to certain state restructuring activities. The Company continued to maintain a full valuation allowance for its net deferred tax assets (“DTAs”). We do not consider DTLs related to indefinite-lived assets in evaluating the realizability of our DTAs, as the timing of their reversal cannot be determined. The tax provision and offsetting valuation allowance resulted in an effective tax rate of (439.2)% and (183.2)% for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. The annual effective tax rate for Radio One in 2014 and 2013 primarily reflects the change in DTLs associated with the tax amortization of indefinite-lived intangible assets. " Looks like they paid $1.016 million in cash taxes in 2014.

Yes, what mephistopheles said. He just means those who earned their own wealth vs. those who inherited it.

Schwab is another that offers services to a lot of RIAs. My wife worked at a firm that uses Schwab institutional and they stuck with it so it must not be too bad. https://si2.schwabinstitutional.com/SI2/SecAdmin/Logon.aspx Interactive brokers gets criticism for the user interface / reporting, but I haven't had any issues with it. Both have improved over the years, and from the advisor's side I really love it. Trader Workstation may be daunting at first, but I've been using it for over a decade and it's second nature now. Very powerful and much faster than any web-based interface. I use the stand alone java application, downloaded to my computer. You can make one trade and allocate percentages to each account you manage, or make individual trades in individual accounts, which is common since new accounts come in from time to time. The reporting can be as nice as you wish, since you can customize and white-label (or whatever they call the branding) the portfolio analyst reports into really nice looking PDF statements. Conversely, accounts I manage for people at other brokerages don't usually have a good performance reporting function - Fidelity is OK but delayed which is ridiculous since it's just a computer calculation. Lots of brokers don't report performance since they don't want you comparing your results with benchmarks. IB makes it easy. I haven't used the Schwab institutional so I don't know how good they are on performance reporting - but I remember my wife's previous firm used an expensive stand alone software package to do their performance reporting. They were also aggregating clients entire financial picture, including account at other custodians so that may have been the reason. The main issue for IB is that unsophisticated clients don't like the two-factor authentication log-in - but some of my clients love it and tell me it makes them feel cool to need that. It's hard for a client in their 90's or 100's. But the internet is hard for them anyway. I think you can opt out of the two-factor log in and use the web-only interface and it is not too much different than any other online broker from the clients perspective. On second-guessing clients and trade-copiers - That's on you to clearly communicate what you are going to do for them. I don't mess around when I am considering a new client. You don't have to take them all and you need to be clear on what services you are offering. I've only had one client (actually the partner of a client) copy trades and he was so bad at it (and the security so illiquid) that he drove the price way up on himself and I likely sold some of his girlfriend's shares to him on the spike... You can always dump a client. The quality of your clients is very important when a bear market or extended flat market comes. How they behave will affect your performance. I've been really lucky but my wife had some horrible clients that inherited their fortune and just couldn't bear to watch it shrink any further in 2009 - predictably liquidating all their equities at the bottom and going all cash... She found the self-made clients had no problem staying the course or even adding to their equity allocation during the crisis.

In my state you can charge performance fees if the investor is a qualified purchaser or accredited. Not for everybody else. Depends on the state/jurisdiction.

The regulations really are designed to protect the investors - who are usually much less savvy than the manager or potential manager. You can become a registered investment advisor and manage separate accounts for a % of portfolio value very very easily and inexpensively. It gets a LOT more complicated if you want to take custody of client assets and I think that is for good reason. I'm not sure why the government doesn't allow pay for performance or hurdle rates for small investors, since it is less conflicted than taking a fixed % regardless of performance, but that is how they drew the line.

patmo, I get that you don't like hearing quotes from Warren Buffett, but you surely must know how to spell his name by now.

It also looks like Berkshire might have a ~$12 Billion write up on the transaction, if current KRFT prices minus 16.50 is approximately the post special dividend share price. I get around $8 Billion in combined adjusted EBITDA with their conservative projected initial synergies, cost savings - on an $81 Billion market cap. Then the 3G team gets to work plugging Kraft brands into the HNZ international network and Kraft brands into the HNZ foodservice machine. I'm sure there is plenty to do.

Here is a filing that shows the adjusted EBITDA numbers that 3G / Heinz uses in thinking about Kraft. Looks like this deal will close shortly after the shareholder vote. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1545158/000119312515224426/0001193125-15-224426-index.htm Another filing shows adjusted EBITDA numbers that 3G uses for Heinz: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600508/000119312515224925/d944946dex991.htm

"their companies"... I don’t. Actually, it is the right opposite for me: I look with skepticism at entrepreneurs who think they can keep control over their companies only thorough strong business results over a very long period of time. They are acting naively imo, instead I want to see great pragmatism in everything they choose and do. Gio

A bit more on the deal and the Q&A with analysts: --------------------- IAG to slash its open market reinsurance spend Adam McNestrie IAG expects to reduce its open market reinsurance spend by 20 percent to accommodate its new strategic partnership with Berkshire Hathaway, according to CFO Nick Hawkins. Speaking to analysts earlier today (16 June), Hawkins said: "We will be shrinking our reinsurance buying by 20 percent on everything. "As an example, when we go to market - assuming the same programme we currently have on the main cat tower - where at the moment we buy just over A$7bn ($5.4bn), that number will shrink by 20 percent." IAG said that it would not be looking to restructure its current cat cover, which runs until 31 December, and that any changes would come for the 2016 placement. This morning, IAG and Berkshire Hathaway announced a 10-year, 20 percent quota share across the Australian carrier's insurance businesses that will see A$2.3bn of premiums ceded annually. The broad-ranging deal also included an A$500mn equity placement with Berkshire Hathaway that gives Berkshire a 3.7 percent stake in IAG, and a business swap where IAG will exit large commercial business and Berkshire discontinue writing personal lines and SME business. IAG tried to maintain that the long-term agreement - which it expected to last beyond the initial 10-year term - would not impact its relationships with its other reinsurers. "Our expectation is that it won't affect them at all," Hawkins argued, saying that he expected such relationships with other major reinsurers to "continue on as they are". However, many of IAG's reinsurers were already understood to be disgruntled. As previously reported, IAG headed into its 1 January renewal pursuing a major rate decrease on its huge cat programme, despite warning reinsurers to expect a major and unspecified loss deterioration from the New Zealand earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Following articles from this publication, IAG informed reinsurers just ahead of the renewal that its fully reinsured losses would rise by NZ$750mn-NZ$1bn, ($523mn-$697mn), but still pushed ahead with rate reductions of 10-20 percent. IAG's shares responded positively to the announcement of the deal, surging by 4.3 percent to close at A$5.81. However, analysts gave CEO Mike Wilkins and CFO Hawkins a hard ride during the Q&A session, as they repeatedly questioned the dilution to earnings that the deal looks set to produce. Ross Curran of CBA asked if IAG had agreed to give away 20 percent of the company for a 3.7 percent equity investment. A JP Morgan analyst said that it appeared the agreement would produce a 3 percent dilution in 2016 earnings, as well as increasing the group's share count by 3.8 percent. "It seems like quite a dilutive deal. So to do this just for a strategic relationship seems like quite an expensive deal." An analyst also questioned the value of a put option for a further 5 percent of the shares in issuance, given that IAG is now comfortably above its targeted capital range. IAG's primary motivation for the agreement was the override that it will receive on the quota share and the move towards a more fee-heavy earnings stream which that would bring. Hawkins said: "The key to the transaction is what the additional fee income, or commission income, or exchange commission we're receiving over and above the proportional share of claims and expenses to compensate IAG and IAG shareholders for the access to that profit stream." Later, he expanded on this point: "We're trading volatility for more certainty; and you're trading insurance risk for fee-based income, and as part of that there's this opportunity to release capital off the books to the tune of A$700mn." The JP Morgan analyst also seemed to find IAG's stated rationale for the deal hard to follow, particularly in terms of the capital changes. "A question I have is around the need for the capital raise you're doing," he said, citing the A$700mn capital release and the A$500mn equity placement. "I'm just wondering what actually is triggering this. Because you're flagging opportunities in Asia, but nothing has really changed from what you said in the past." He continued: "You said India, Indonesia - but they're all quite small in the scheme of things." With so much capital freed up, Wilkins felt the need to address the possibility that IAG was gearing up for a major deal. "The capital that we've got is not burning a hole in our pocket," he said, emphasising that there was no pressure to pursue a major transaction in Asia. IAG said that following the equity raise and factoring in the impact of the quota share, its pro forma Prescribed Capital Amount ratio would be 2.14x - compared to a target range of 1.4x-1.6x. Adam McNestrie can be found tweeting at @adammcnestrie

General Berkshire news - Suncorp wasn't too thrilled that BHSI entered Australia as a competitor and pulled back from their relationship with Ajit, now Berkshire is doing this deal with IAG - *edit: bloomberg article adds Buffett comments, including an uncharacteristic description of what he will invest the float in? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-15/buffett-s-berkshire-hathaway-pays-a-500-million-for-stake-in-iag another article quoting Buffett on the deal: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/warren-buffett-to-spend-2bn-a-year-on-aussie-equities-20150616-ghpayi From Insurance Insider yesterday: ----------------------------- IAG agrees A$2.3bn Berkshire quota share IAG has entered into a long-term partnership with Berkshire Hathaway underpinned by a 10-year 20 percent quota share arrangement across the Australasian insurer's consolidated insurance business. Based on IAG's full-year 2015 gross written premium (GWP) growth expectations, Berkshire Hathaway will receive an estimated A$2.3bn ($1.8bn) of the company's consolidated GWP. The whole account quota share is intended to reduce IAG's earnings volatility and capital requirements, the carrier said, and is effective from 1 July. The deal also sees Berkshire Hathaway take a 3.7 percent stake in IAG via an A$500mn ($387mn) placement, acquiring 89.8 million new fully paid IAG ordinary shares at $5.57 each. The Australian insurer has an option to place an additional 5 percent stake with Berkshire Hathaway within 24 months, with the conglomerate agreeing not to increase its stake beyond 14.9 percent over the next decade. IAG will also acquire Berkshire Hathaway's local personal and SME business lines, while Berkshire will acquire the renewal rights to IAG's large corporate property and liability insurance business in Australia. The rights to be transferred by IAG represent less than 1 percent of its annual GWP. IAG said that the two companies would have an "exclusive relationship in Australia and New Zealand". Berkshire Hathaway and IAG concluded a number of multi-year cat deals in the wake of the 2010/11 New Zealand earthquakes, helping to make New Zealand the conglomerate's largest probable maximum loss. Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett commented: "Our strategic partnership with IAG will help fast-track our entry into this region, and provides us with opportunities to leverage IAG's extensive capabilities while also making our expertise available to IAG." The quota share arrangement will reduce IAG's exposure to catastrophe risks in Australia and New Zealand, but IAG said its strategic priorities in those regions remain unchanged. IAG said it expected the quota share arrangement would result in a reduced capital requirement of approximately A$700mn over the next five years, with around A$400mn of that benefit expected to be realised in 2016. The company said that the partnership would give it greater strategic and financial flexibility to pursue growth opportunities, particularly in Asia in its target markets of India, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In India, IAG is looking to increase its stake in SBI General, the general insurance joint venture with State Bank of India, from 24 percent to 49 percent. It also recently acquired an insurance licence in Indonesia via the purchase of general insurer PT Asuransi Parolamas. The company said it would consider participating in any potential industry consolidation in Thailand, and further opportunities to expand its presence in Malaysia via the joint venture AmGeneral Holdings. IAG managing director and CEO Mike Wilkins commented: "China is a source of enormous potential growth for IAG and we are actively working on opportunities to increase our presence in that market." IAG chairman Brian Schwartz added: "We believe the partnership is an endorsement of our strategy, the strong franchises we have created in the Asia Pacific region and an acknowledgement of the complementary capabilities we can bring for our customers." In addition to providing IAG with the capital for an Asian growth strategy, the quota share's structure should improve the firm's insurance margin by around 200 basis points - implying a significant amount of override. It is also Berkshire Hathaway's most significant such deal since it agreed to provide Swiss Re with a 20 percent quota share of its P&C book in the throes of the financial crisis in 2008. In the final year of the deal Berkshire assumed $2.6bn of premiums. That agreement, which also saw the carrier take a 3 percent stake in the Swiss giant, ran for five years and expired at the end of 2012. More recently, Berkshire Hathaway concluded a quota share for 30 percent of Suncorp's Queensland homeowners' portfolio, but this was only worth annual premium of around A$300mn. The agreement incepted in 2012 but was coming to an end at the mid-year renewals this year. It is understood Berkshire Hathaway's entry into the primary market in Australia has caused friction with Suncorp, as The Insurance Insider has previously reported.

From an article written exactly a year ago - "the firm has posted an average annualized return of about 17% since its inception in 2000, after fees." I wouldn't imagine it's too different updated to today. He has continued to do well.

Also these websites have a lot of links to all the materials. Nothing like starting with the partnership letters and reading straight through to today. http://www.valuewalk.com/warren-buffett/ (scroll down for links to most everything) https://warrenbuffettresource.wordpress.com/ -this site has almost all the articles, interviews, lectures, etc.. he has given plus links to the annual letters. The Cunningham book that kclarkin posted is the closest thing to cliff's notes of the annual letters.

There aren't that many essays, articles, etc. It's a pleasure to read his writing directly. Are you talking about the shareholder letters?

A couple years when the stock market only goes up with negligible volatility is probably not enough experience to take on other people's capital. My advice is to continue learning, build an audited track record over multiple market cycles - at least one bear market - and to start to cultivate a group of people with investment capital who over time express an interest in you taking over management. Then you can either start a small partnership, or much easier and lower cost, use a separate account advisor platform at a broker like IB. You will need the series 65, so you could start studying for that while you build a track record over a meaningful period of time. I doubt you will find it pleasant to manage outside capital through a bear market if you have never managed your own capital through a bear market.

And one more- "Specialty (re)insurer Fidelis has confirmed that it will launch with around $1.5bn of capital, after it secured an A- rating from AM Best. The start-up, which is led by CEO Richard Brindle and CFO Neil McConachie, said that it will look to optimise its returns across the liability and asset sides of its balance sheet. The Insurance Insider first revealed in October that Brindle was working on a new vehicle after exiting Lancashire, the specialty insurer he founded in 2005, and reported on 2 June that the Fidelis fundraise was due to close this week at $1.5bn. As previously reported, private equity houses Crestview Partners and Pine Brook will invest in the new Bermuda-based business. They will be joined by CVC Capital Partners, rather than Oaktree as initially intended. In total the three PE houses will contribute $650mn of capital, Fidelis said, with the balance coming from individual investors, family offices and institutions. "By focusing on either assets or liabilities, legacy insurance models have failed to optimise shareholder returns, and the low returns generated by fixed income investments have been challenging," Brindle said. "Fidelis will pursue a total return strategy by tactically shifting capital and risk between insurance and investments to maximise our return on equity across market cycles. But we are first and foremost an underwriting company." Fidelis confirmed that it would use a number of fund managers with a range of different strategies rather than allocating all of its assets to a single investment manager. At the time of the fundraise, Fidelis said that it intended to use fund managers including York Capital, Seminole and BlackRock. The asset management strategy will be developed in conjunction with Goldman Sachs' Alternative Investments & Manager Selection Group and will be managed by chief investment officer Edward Russell. "In addition to seeking returns that outperform peers, we believe the diversification in assets will protect Fidelis against financial market volatility better than a single-manager strategy would," McConachie explained. "Optimising across hard and soft underwriting markets, as well as through different investment cycles makes Fidelis not only a strong new player, but also very attractive for investors looking to reduce downside risk." Fidelis said that its underwriting portfolio - which will be spread across reinsurance and insurance - will principally be in property, energy, marine and aviation risk classes, although it is also understood to be looking at writing a book of political risk business. As previously reported by The Insurance Insider, Amlin's Ben Savill is in line to become CEO of Fidelis in Bermuda, with Aon Benfield's Dan Burrows set to take up the role of London CEO once regulatory approval is secured. Brindle will act as group chief underwriting officer and will be actively involved in underwriting the company's portfolio, it is understood."

He had some fans on this board, so I thought someone might find it interesting ------------------------ Insurers have 'one hand tied behind back': Brindle Adam McNestrie Legacy insurers have been "sleepwalking" for the last seven years and have failed to adapt to the realities posed by a low interest rate environment, according to Fidelis CEO Richard Brindle. Speaking to The Insurance Insider as he launched his new $1.5bn carrier, Brindle argued that since the financial crisis began, "everyone has had one hand tied behind their back" when it comes to their low-yielding fixed income portfolios. "They're making 0 percent now where they used to make 5 percent," he added. Historically, the industry has relied upon generating a return from the asset side of the balance sheet as well as the liability side, but - unlike other areas of the financial services sector - insurers have failed to recalibrate their business model, the CEO argued. Fidelis - his answer to the challenge - is a total return carrier that will dynamically change the amount of investment and underwriting risk it takes depending on market conditions. Brindle said that Berkshire Hathaway is the only company in the space that has pursued this sort of model. But while he admires Berkshire's trading instincts, Brindle said that Fidelis would not take quite such an opportunistic approach to its underwriting to ensure that client and broker relationships were safeguarded. The Lancashire founder told The Insurance Insider that the business would not be gunning for the same level of investment returns as some of the more aggressive hedge fund reinsurers. "We're not trying to be a Third Point Re and make 15 points a year on the investments," he said. Instead, the aim will be to make a high single-digit return on the asset side. "The focus will be more on the investments than the underwriting in the first couple of years," Brindle said, with the second half of 2015 and 2016 seen as a "ramp up" period in underwriting owing to market conditions. However, the business is still targeting a few percentage points of return on equity from underwriting in its first full year in operation. "To begin with the underwriting piston will be pushed most of the way down and the investment piston pushed most of the way up," he said. "But we could move our allocation to mostly cash and fixed income almost overnight if we need to." When the concept was under development last year, Brindle and CFO Neil McConachie were thinking more along the lines of a portfolio weighted towards specialty insurance, with some reinsurance exposure. However, the emphasis has since shifted towards reinsurance. "It's carnage in some of the specialty insurance classes - pricing has just gone off a cliff. We're not ideological about which lines of business we write." Brindle has a long history of writing terrorism and energy business, and many expected them to be cornerstone classes for Fidelis. But the former Lancashire executive described them as "probably the worst in the world" at the moment. By contrast, some reinsurance classes - including property catastrophe - continue to have attractive margins, he argued. Nevertheless, Brindle acknowledged that "the garden is hardly rosy" and that he regards current market conditions as unsustainable. This stance represents a contrarian perspective given that the value of a reinsurance book is currently being heavily discounted in favour of portfolios of specialty insurance business. Brindle maintained that there were opportunities in the reinsurance market for a new business of Fidelis' size, adding that the brokers were getting "spooked" about the "disappearance of counterparties" as M&A activity gathers pace. And, although he continues to believe that a certain scale is needed to ensure relevance, Brindle insisted that the industry has overreacted, with carriers now "obsessed with becoming hulking big companies". A nimble carrier with talented underwriters and a $100mn line size was closer to the industry sweet spot than a $10bn business, the executive argued. He also said that Fidelis had not finished fundraising, with secondary raises from the Goldman Sachs high-net-worth network on the cards, potentially in the coming months. Brindle said that CFO McConachie was responsible for pioneering the current operating model at the public London companies, which involves significant capital returns to shareholders, and said that this would continue at Fidelis. A strong stream of dividends would be a major attraction to shareholders as the company navigates towards an initial public offering, likely in New York, over a two-to-five-year time window. Charles Mathias, who resigned as chief risk officer at Lancashire earlier this week, is joining Fidelis in the same role. Goldman Sachs and Kinmont advised Fidelis.

This is a nice idea and one that used to exist. My roommate in college used an early online service to do this before many companies had their own online / automatic bill pay stuff set up. I can't remember the name of the service. I believe he used it for years, then the company finally went out of business. There may still be a service like it out there, but I think the business model became tougher when virtually every service provider provided their own free online / automatic bill pay systems. It saved my roommate's credit though - without that service (back then you had to have all your paper bills mailed to their address for it to work) he could NEVER pay a bill on time and he was constantly getting calls from creditors, etc... Our landlord would take a check from me for my half of the rent but my roommate had to hand it to her in cash each month because he was so bad with money management. Luckily for him he is wealthy now, he wouldn't have fared well otherwise...