Fairfax 2026

[KFS]

On 6/14/2026 at 5:54 PM, SafetyinNumbers said:

They also used their more fairly valued stock to buy Allied World which reduced the impact of the hedging strategy by issuing equity and dramatically increased the float ahead of what they expected to be an increase in interest rates. That ultimately took a lot longer to happen. They were already in talks with AW in September of that year but they did bump in December to help get the AW BOD on board. Another example of how Fairfax often expresses the same bet in a multitude of ways.

 

 

Not to be nitpicky here but just to clarify, I'm not sure I would have called the stock fairly valued during this transaction.  Fairfax issued 5.1 million shares at a P/B of only 1.06 to acquire Allied World.  Of course it has worked out great over the years, but I don't remember it being an obviously good move at the time.  

 

From the 2017 annual report:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marco Van Basten]

6 hours ago, SafetyinNumbers said:

Probabilistic investing often looks like luck.

With all due respect, has the equity book outperformed the S&P over the last 15 years?  By the way, there have been plenty of incredible opportunities in both US and non-US.  Why buy Eurobank when you could have bought Aena, Halma, Diploma, Asml, Hermes, Sartorius Stadim Biotech, Safran?  Why buy Blackberry, et all when Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, Micron, Moody's, S&P Global, Idexx, Heico, Transdigm, GE, RSG & WM, and the list goes on were available?  Why are we so proud of buying crappy businesses at 50 cents on the dollar when Nvidia was trading at 5 cents on the dollar 5 years ago?