berkshiremystery Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 The Fairfax Newsletter (Premier Issue: Vol.1, Issue.1, Winter 2011) Fairfax and Prem have just recently published their first company newsletter to all employees of the company. It's an inaugural issue of a newsletter they will publish on a periodic basis with two major goals. 1) Fairfax intend to promote a broader base of knowledge about the company to all of employees. 2) they seek to promote and facilitate greater cooperation and interaction across our group, between companies and among employees. And in future issues of the newsletter they intend to highlight centers of excellence within the group of companies. In the first premiere issue Prem talks about the company history and how they opened Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel in 1984, and later bought control of Markel Insurance Company of Canada in 1985. He also talks about the more current economic situation. Prem says: We worry that in the United States there is no ammunition left for government to counter this debt build-up and its negative impact on the economy. Interest rates are already effectively at zero percent and there is no fiscal “ammo” remaining. In 2008-2009 the United States stimulated the economy with a lot of borrowed money, with little positive effect. Further U.S. fiscal stimulus in our opinion is not likely to occur because there is no political consensus that adding more government spending will ease unemployment or otherwise impact the current economic malaise. Europe has already approved austerity budgets to deal with its debt build-up and balance its books. Finally, in China there is a possibility that a major bubble in real estate may burst. At the end of the newsletter they have a review of their visit at The Society for the Care of the Blind located outside of Warsaw in Laski, Poland. Prem along with other executives from Fairfax and PolishRe, visited the school in Laski in early September of 2011 and donated about $150,000. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a photo from the visit in Laski. http://www.laski.edu.pl/files/DSC06210.JPG article translated with Google: Laski visited their benefactor, one of the richest men in Canada, Mr. Prem Watsa. Canadian Indian origin, came to a great fortune with his own work. Today Fairfax Holdings Company manages a large reinsurance company that is insuring the insurers. The company has branches in many countries, including Poland. Mr. Watsa offered a few years ago 150,000 dollars for the construction of the Centre for Early Intervention in Sobieszewo. Now we have to thank him. CEO of Society for the Blind Mr. Wladyslaw Dove medal presented to Mr Watsa Pax et Gaudium In Cruce . Mr. Watssa and the accompanying persons visited the Centre for Early Intervention, Home Girls, where he met a delicious lunch, then visited the Chapel of Our Central and Peace, where he signed the book. Met twice with our pupils from kindergarten to elementary school and middle school. Despite the rain, the visit was very successful. http://www.laski.edu.pl/aktualnosc,598,dobrodziej_lasek ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 Here is a link to the full Newsletter as a PDF. http://www.fairfax.ca/Theme/Fairfax/files/newsletters/FairfaxNewsletter7%2012-20-11.pdf
Parsad Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 Good stuff! I think this is great for the company and its employees. Cheers!
Ben Graham Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 It was nice to see how important Francis Chou's idea was! Use the float wisely - take advantage of Mr. Market, by not paying too much for assets.
Grenville Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 Awesome. I imagine there's so much knowledge spread across the organization, this should help grow and sustain the culture across Fairfax! Hats off to Fairfax for making this available to shareholders in some form!
link01 Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 Awesome. I imagine there's so much knowledge spread across the organization, this should help grow and sustain the culture across Fairfax! Hats off to Fairfax for making this available to shareholders in some form! ditto that!
berkshiremystery Posted February 9, 2012 Author Posted February 9, 2012 Awesome. I imagine there's so much knowledge spread across the organization, this should help grow and sustain the culture across Fairfax! Hats off to Fairfax for making this available to shareholders in some form! Guys & dolls,... calm down! ...you shouldn't thank Fairfax, probably more our board member "Morgan" ;) for linking the pdf file directly to this thread. You know I found this pdf-file accidently two days ago, while I was bored and googling, playing on my keyboard with some search strings. Probably also with the term: "Prem Watsa" filetype:pdf, trying to see, if there is anything new about him in pdf format. So the Google crawler algorithm must have found and indexed it somehow, despite there isn't any direct link on the Fairfax site. At least I couldn't find any. Thus I thought that this file might not be intended for shareholder eyes, and probably only for the internal use of employees. So carefully, ::) I tried not to link it direcly to this message thread. Well,... the virus of the mind of our naughty board member Morgan defeated my brave intention. ;D
Parsad Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 If it wasn't to be seen by shareholders, I would have already heard about it from Fairfax, so I don't think there is an issue. Maybe Prem made it convoluted to find, just to see exactly how many die-hard followers there are out there! ;D Cheers!
berkshiremystery Posted September 23, 2012 Author Posted September 23, 2012 Here's the second issue of the Fairfax Newsletter with the cover story about "Fairmont Specialty Group". Unfortunately this PDF-file contains only the pages 1-3 of the letter. It seems that they publish the newsletter on a quarterly basis. Cheers! The Fairfax Newsletter (Issue: Vol.1, Issue.2, Spring 2012) April 2012 http://accidenthealth.fairmontspecialty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Fairfax-Newsletter.pdf
giofranchi Posted September 23, 2012 Posted September 23, 2012 Hey berkshiremystery! how could you wet our appetite, then leave us with only 3 pages??!! ;D Just joking! Thank you very much for posting! giofranchi
berkshiremystery Posted September 23, 2012 Author Posted September 23, 2012 Also for the lusting readers,... the 3rd edition/summer issue of the Fairfax newsletter. It contains mostly an informative article with photos from the April shareholders meeting in Toronto. Fairfax also had a first business roundtable the day prior to the meeting for it's CEO's of Fairfax's major investee partners and respected economist Gary Shilling and Gordon Chang, a writer for Forbes. Not sure,... if Sanjeev can answer the question,... but I remember him saying that Prem and his folks were upstairs at the Fairmont, at some meetings before they came downstairs to see us. So I presume that this might have been this other event. The Fairfax Newsletter (Issue: Vol.1, Issue.3, Summer 2012) Fairfax Shareholder's Annual Meeting http://72.32.129.160/Theme/Fairfax/files/Fairfax%20Newsletter%20Third%20Edition%202012(np)_v001_q499ju.pdf
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