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Thanks for the detailed run down. You may be interested in (or entertained by) this case if you haven't already seen it. Seems possible that it is another case of denying coverage and having it look like you chose not to defend your insured in court and then having the whole thing blow up on you without ever having the opportunity to defend your interests in court. https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=187183 Cliffs notes: A couple get intimate in a GEICO insured vehicle. One catches HPV from the other. GEICO told to pay $5.2 million. The HPV-giving party knew they had HPV because they were previously told that their throat cancer tumor tested positive for HPV. GEICO denies claim. The intimate couple appears to be working together (likely fraud imo), went to arbitration, were awarded a ton of money and GEICO is told to pay it. Of course they also offered to settle within the policy liability limits earlier ($1m), which I understand to have the effect of effectively eliminating the policy liability limit once GEICO declines to accept the settlement offer within the policy limits. The linked case is GEICO's appeal (which they lost).

Maybe ask @Tim Eriksen if you are interested in "expert market" type securities?

Some here might be interested in the minutiae of National Indemnity's business - this lawsuit was recently filed by NICO against 7 reinsurers for not paying their share of an asbestos settlement NICO agreed to with the state of Montana arising from policies written by NICO in 1973-75 (after Berkshire bought NICO but before Ajit was hired). NICO settled with Montana in April 2022 for $157 million to resolve the matter (some of this had already been paid) and sent a bill to each of the 7 reinsurers who basically indicated they weren't paying. Page 6 and 7 of the lawsuit show the figures. NICO has billed the reinsurance companies (many of them successors to the original companies) a total of $104.5m. show_temp.pl-11.pdf

I thought it was worthwhile to listen to Jamie Dimon's actual complete audio from the "hurricane" headlines. He's always interesting to listen to anyway - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4515787-jpmorgan-chase-and-co-jpm-ceo-jamie-dimon-presents-bernstein-38th-annual-strategic-decisions

BNSF was able to borrow $1B for 30 years at 4.5% - still an extremely attractive environment for high quality corporate borrowers. This was priced yesterday - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/934612/000119312522164076/d358107dfwp.htm

Thanks for the on-the-ground color. It is really interesting. I had posted this article on Sunday over on the Joe thread - recounts a similar situation as of Sunday. Berkshire and DE Shaw are quoting but at their price. Nice to see a few large deals getting done though. One of my favorite Berkshire deals in Florida was years ago when they wrote a policy where all they had to do in the event of a super-cat above a certain size was agree up-front to buy municipal bonds from the state insurance fund. Didn't end up being a big year for storms and Berkshire didn't buy the bonds, but what a concept - instead of paying a claim you just buy muni bonds... In New Orleans, I expected some of our policies to go way up based on what is happening to other people here. Our Flood policies, which are priced by Fema under a new opaque formula for the first time this year (risk rating 2.0), went down by 25%. Our homeowners and rental property policies stayed approximately the same. I think the new standing seam roof ended up offsetting a rate rise at home and our other properties didn't have claims for Ida. We use USAA for insurance though, and most other carriers are just exiting the market. USAA seems to stick with their members or at least we hope so. Here is the Sunday blurb out of Insurance Insider - "Storm clouds gather over the Sunshine State The 1.6 renewals in Florida are proving to be the toughest in a generation. With only three days to go before the deadline for the 1 June reinsurance renewals, there is still a plethora of unplaced business in the market. As this publication reported in a deep-dive analysis piece earlier this week, the property treaty market is now in a “state of chaos” as a sense of acceptance builds that a number of placements will not get over the line in time. Late on Wednesday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law two key bills in an attempt to limit surging property loss costs. However, the response to the action has been muted. Among the concerns raised have been whether the size of the announced $2bn reinsurance fund – which will sit beneath the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and provide cedants with much-needed access to low-layer limit – is adequate. One market source described the first of the two bills – which would establish the so-called Reinsurance to Assist Policyholders (RAP) program as “sticking a Band-Aid on a broken leg”. And analysts at KBW said that they did not expect the initiative to “meaningfully impact” demand or the soaring costs of private reinsurance. In an exclusive interview with this publication, Demotech’s Joe Petrelli said the ratings agency will not lower its minimum reinsurance requirements despite the likelihood of major holes in the cat programs of a significant number of Florida carriers. He also noted that the RAP reinsurance fund does not cover tropical storms or other non-hurricane events, leaving carriers who utilise it and don’t buy low down private cover bare for those perils. Meanwhile on Friday, we reported that, for those carriers with deep enough pockets for private deals, Berkshire Hathaway (BH) and DE Shaw – often described as reinsurers of last resort – were understood to have been quoting private layers in recent days. "

Following reports that the 6/1 cat renewals were not going smoothly, there is a report that Berkshire wrote at least one large reinsurance policy for a Florida carrier (HCI). Hopefully Ajit got some more big deals done on good terms. https://www.insuranceinsider.com/article/2a65bnb78rcx9lqkk58u8/reinsurers-section/berkshire-hathaway-writes-400mn-line-on-floridian-carrier-hcis-reinsurance-treaty

20087.2022.P.Q1.P.O.1.4376224.pdf This is the Q1 2022 NAIC filing for National Indemnity. The screenshot I posted earlier is from page 155 I believe. There is a lot of detail to scroll through to get to anything interesting. Don't worry about the trades in American Express, this is just National Indemnity buying this stock from other Berkshire subsidiaries (not a taxable event). Page 157 shows the average price they sold most of the Verizon stock for - $52.64 / share, a loss of about a billion dollars before dividends and tax benefit.

1st quarter NAIC filing for National Indemnity. Will post the pdfs later but traveling currently

For the German companies Berkshire purchased in Q1, they were: Allianz, Munich Re and BASF

Ah yes, I forgot that became effective. So Berkshire has other reasons for not wanting to go above 10% on USB. Thanks for posting that

If we are just talking about non-bank stocks, there are two main "hassles" - one is the "short swing profit rule" which basically has the effect of forcing the 10+% holder of the stock to return to the company any profit it makes if it holds the stock for less than 6 months. Despite what your intentions might be on holding period, it is a pain to not be able to sell out of your position and keep any profits if something changes (like your liquidity needs or the share price for example). That's not the biggest hassle, but it does play into their thinking. The main "hassle" for a high profile investor (remember that Ted and Todd's trades will largely say "Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway" when reporting) is that once you are in the stock and over 10%, you have to notify the world 3 days after your first share sale. So you greatly increase your friction costs to exit the position if everybody knows that Warren Buffett (who's supposed to know a lot about these things) is just beginning a major divestment and has a lot more stock to sell. So the price gets pushed lower on you and it costs you real money. With a bank holding company, you cannot go over 10% without Fed approval. Berkshire has conditional approval to go up to 25% on American Express if they remain totally passive and they have conditional approval to go above 10% on BAC - I don't remember how high they can go. Perhaps higher if it is only due to company repurchases. This is why Berkshire periodically sells USB shares. They don't have permission to go above 10%. So they only go above 10% when something is going to be a really long-term hold or they really really like it. They went above 10% on BNSF (something like 22%). They are above 10% on Moody's, DaVita and Occidental. There may be some others (obviously BAC & AXP above). KHC is sort of special because they are part of a control group and use the equity method. To me, it means that they are not buying OXY for a short term hold. They may want the entire company but who knows (not me).

For the Berkshire shareholders interested in following Alleghany's results now that it looks like the deal is on track - here are their recent earnings -> https://www.alleghany.com/investor-relations/press-releases/press-release-details/2022/Alleghany-Corporation-Reports-2022-First-Quarter-Results/default.aspx PDF of the earnings press release (same as above): https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/1Q22-Earnings-Release-(Final).pdf PDF of financial supplement: https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/1Q22-Financial-Supplement-(Final).pdf PDF of the 10Q: https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/29d616ca-5db1-45a1-a5a1-be93d181cd58.pdf ---------- When I first saw the decline in investment income I was hopeful it was due to a decrease in bond portfolio duration but it was not (avg. duration is 4.4 yrs, was 4.5 yrs at year-end). It appears Y invests some of its float in hedge funds and other LPs, some of which had significant gains on Cryptocurrencies in the year-ago quarter.

On Lanxess, I believe he started that position through one of General Re's European divisions back in 2017. There were articles at the time saying he was over 3% or something like that. He has added to it from time to time, so it could be one of the German securities that he referenced - but this hasn't been a great investment for him so far. Just speculating, but he has traded large positions in Munich Re in the past, and we did see a big increase in "banks, insurance & finance" category of equity holdings at cost basis - so maybe he is back into Munich Re as one of the German buys. The buying may not show up in the NAIC filings at all if it was done through Harney Investment Trust. If it does, it will probably be within one of the Euro subs of General Re - Cologne Re may have been re-named General Reinsurance AG or something like that. Will have to root around.

Yes - Thanks for posting this interview. Berkshire got so insanely lucky to find and hire this guy.

Apologies if this has already been posted, but Berkshire is still buying OXY shares - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001067983/000089924322016679/xslF345X03/doc4.xml

The NAIC filings for the 1st quarter of 2022 are not posted yet, but I will have a look when I notice them. Could be a while if they don't come out before I head to Spain for a month, early next week. But I will look 'cause I'm curious...

well he didn’t buy any Y yet. He bought 9.5% of ATVI. He bought a little more of all 5 Japanese trading companies. He bought a couple German stocks and one more foreign stock I can’t recall. No idea what was sold.

Buffett announcing that he is participating now in the ATVI arb spread with a 9.5% position

Berkshire bought more Apple stock in Q1 Looks like they bought approximately 3.6 million additional shares. Hopefully bottom ticked it in March Berkshire now owns 5.63% of Apple using their most recent 4/15 share count.

Charlie looks great. Warren usually starts slow like this (lately) and gets more energized when the questions start rolling in. He isn't cut out for powerpoint presentations

Hey John, I believe that Chevron just bumped Coca-Cola from the top 4 companies by holding market value at the end of the quarter. (400 million KO shares was "only" worth around $24.8 Billion at quarter end)

For the bond portfolio, it looks like - similar to Fairfax, they increased their holdings of US treasury/agencies by $5.5 Billion at cost. There was very little change in corporate bonds or foreign government bonds. I would assume a similar move to Fairfax of Berkshire starting to purchase some 1-2 yr US gov bonds.

Yeah, GEICO even had a ton of cost-cutting with expense ratios way down. But this huge boom in the value of used cars and inflation in the cost of car parts is killing them. PGR is also raising prices, but looks like GEICO is choosing to be slower with price increases. Also injury claims values are trending higher than general inflation. Luckily, GEICO can change prices on a 6 month rolling basis, so can adjust over the course of a year if they choose to. More interesting to me is the difference between so many other insurers celebrating "hard market" and writing huge growth in premium volume and profitability, where Berkshire seems to be taking the opposite approach. Very slow growth outside of BH Specialty/primary - and low underwriting profitability. Could be more conservative assumptions since maybe Berkshire is being more real about inflation than other insurers.

Berkshire went huge on Chevron! They had like $26 Billion in Chevron at quarter end!