CorpRaider Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 Didn't like the letter. Too much "bla bla bla". Results have been so so over the last years. It was better before...more results, less words. Yeah, I kind of agree. Also bothers me that they keep buying back stock (apparently no matter the price). Even offsetting the equity comp and/or other issuance to shrink the float a little. I know they have a brunch function in Omaha and everything, but that seems more like Apple "we like our stock at any price" than BRK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigarbutt Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Two interesting perspectives here. Whatever company policy documents available during the relevant time period, the personal relationship obviously raised a potential for significant conflicts of interest on many levels. Markel is not a moral watchdog but why did the relationship remain undisclosed? The amount of the monetary settlement will be related to the outcome of the internal review and outside financial investigation. There is no "right" way to deal with this difficult situation but, so far with the evidence revealed, it seems to me that Markel did the right thing to contain the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broeb22 Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 It is surprising that anyone would think it is appropriate for two senior executives at any company to engage in an undisclosed personal relationship. Even if there was no "code of conduct" expressly prohibiting conducting a personal relationship on the job, Markel in my opinion would be justified in firing two senior executives over this conduct. There is a lot going on in the document, some of which seems shady on Markel's part, but ultimately it is improper for two executives to have a personal relationship, in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spekulatius Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Two interesting perspectives here. Whatever company policy documents available during the relevant time period, the personal relationship obviously raised a potential for significant conflicts of interest on many levels. Markel is not a moral watchdog but why did the relationship remain undisclosed? The amount of the monetary settlement will be related to the outcome of the internal review and outside financial investigation. There is no "right" way to deal with this difficult situation but, so far with the evidence revealed, it seems to me that Markel did the right thing to contain the issue. How they went about this ( changing ethics code retroactively, obtaining personal phone records) doesn’t seem that great to me. Of course the above link is the plaintiffs perspective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Of course he is going to come up with a litany of ways to justify why he deserves the payout. As an outsider, I don't know how I would gain much from this without hearing Markel's response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongTermView Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Of course he is going to come up with a litany of ways to justify why he deserves the payout. As an outsider, I don't know how I would gain much from this without hearing Markel's response. Agreed, I don't want to come to conclusions until I hear Markel's response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reader Posted April 15, 2019 Share Posted April 15, 2019 Markel Issues Statement on Markel CATCo RICHMOND, Va., April 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Markel Corporation (NYSE: MKL) (the "Company") previously reported that the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Bermuda Monetary Authority (together, the "Governmental Authorities") are conducting inquiries into loss reserves recorded in late 2017 and early 2018 at Markel CATCo Investment Management Ltd. and its subsidiaries (together, "CATCo"). These inquiries are limited to CATCo and do not involve the Company or its other subsidiaries. As the Company previously disclosed, it retained outside counsel to conduct an internal review of CATCo's loss reserving in late 2017 and early 2018. The internal review has recently been completed. The internal review conducted by outside counsel found no evidence that CATCo personnel acted in bad faith in exercising business judgment in the setting of reserves and making related disclosures during late 2017 and early 2018. The Company's outside counsel has met with the Governmental Authorities and reported the findings from the internal review. The Governmental Authorities' inquiries are ongoing and the Company continues to fully cooperate with them. The Company cannot currently predict the duration, scope or result of the Governmental Authorities' inquiries. https://www.markelcorp.com/About-Markel/NewsRoom/Reuters2394437 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigarbutt Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 Markel teams up with Tesla through a fronting arrangement. https://www.reinsurancene.ws/tesla-insurance-product-to-be-fronted-by-markels-state-national/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorpRaider Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Would be very interested if someone asked about this at the brunch; i.e., did they do some DD about risks. "Any concerns/due dilligence about the turnover in the c-suite or reputational harm by association?" I have to wonder if Saurabh hooked this up/highlighted potential for pipeline into how better data and analytics might disrupt the industry. Pretty damned interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValueMaven Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 Does anyone have any interesting SOTP valuation approachs to valuing this? It seems like the overhang from CatCo accounting issues is now gone?! In retrospect -- this thing trading down to the mid-$900s was a bargin for the LT investor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrea Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 The video of the Markel Brunch 2019 is available here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigarbutt Posted July 18, 2019 Share Posted July 18, 2019 It looks like the dust is settling on a personal level. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/16/532453.htm For the unusual reserves development, Markel found 'no bad faith' but still waiting for the government enquiry (inquiry?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reader Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 https://www.artemis.bm/news/nephila-climate-takes-weather-risk-to-assist-scout-wind-farm-financing/#more-61504 "Nephila Climate, the weather, climate risk, and reinsurance focused unit of the largest ILS fund manager Nephila Capital, has participated in another wind farm financing transaction, taking the weather risk out of the equation for operators and investors in the renewables project." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigarbutt Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 https://www.artemis.bm/news/nephila-climate-takes-weather-risk-to-assist-scout-wind-farm-financing/#more-61504 "Nephila Climate, the weather, climate risk, and reinsurance focused unit of the largest ILS fund manager Nephila Capital, has participated in another wind farm financing transaction, taking the weather risk out of the equation for operators and investors in the renewables project." Nephila appears to be a leader in that growing space and, through transaction fees and/or actual risk transfer participations, could make reasonable profits in exchange for the smoothing of operational results. This (contracts related to intermittent or variable sources of energy) is a growing market and 'new' issues are being defined that are really a redefinition of 'fuel' risks traditionally associated with PPAs. A way to classify the risks and potential profit opportunities for risk transfers of wind projects are 1-volume risk: actual volume of energy delivered is less than what was contracted for over a certain period of time, 2-shape risk: the actual energy quantity delivery, which is irregular and hard to predict, although sufficient in volume overall, does not 'fit' energy demand and 3-covariance risk: weather conditions may result in a situation where solar energy and wind energy both reach high levels resulting in lower energy prices in the interim. This field of financial engineering is promising and, interestingly, Microsoft is becoming a leader in providing more global solutions such as Proxy Generation Swap transactions and may ask for specialized agents such as Nephila to act as an intermediate to the reinsurance (traditional or ILS) world for the Volume Firming Agreements aspect. If interested in this fascinating and developing market: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.orrick.com/files/PFIPPAArticle.pdf https://www.artemis.bm/news/nephila-helps-microsoft-hedge-renewable-weather-risk-in-three-deals/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrispy Posted December 2, 2019 Share Posted December 2, 2019 Interesting to see share price at the same level as 2 years ago despite market up quite a bit. Minimal amount of growth, some oversight issues and a slight drop in PB premium Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obtuse_investor Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 It has been mainly a compression of multiple. TBH I am quite ok seeing this compounder slowly grow into heady multiple last couple years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrispy Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 I agree, it is becoming more and more appealing. Time to do some research on future earnings power Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longterminvestor Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 LOOKING FOR SOME HELP. Markel purchased SureTec Financial for $250MM in 2017. SureTec is a pure play surety insurance company. I have tried to find financials for SureTec (Private Co prior to acquisition) - would anyone know where financials for SureTec could be located? They may not exist but Markel's business of insurance is heavily regulated. Hoping Markel might have been required to file financials of SureTec post closing of acquisition on some obscure state regulatory website or SEC somewhere (I have looked on sec.gov but was unsuccessful). Maybe someone can point me in the right direction - I am on a treasure hunt. Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigarbutt Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 ^Here's a regulatory review of the California-based indemnity sub: http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0300-insurers/0400-reports-examination/upload/2015ROE-SureTecInsCo-053117.pdf If your questioning is reasonable and legitimate, why don't you ask them directly for the relevant info? https://www.suretec.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crip1 Posted February 5, 2020 Author Share Posted February 5, 2020 https://www.markel.com/about-markel/press-releases/markel-reports-2019-financial-results-15831 As of close today MKL is selling for less than 1.5x BV. -Crip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Williams406 Posted February 6, 2020 Share Posted February 6, 2020 Very nice 2019 results for MKL, though 30% equity returns and 6.5% fixed income returns combined to produce a 14.6% aggregate portfolio return. I'm not going to pencil those kind of numbers in going forward. Still, more comfortable to hold this position (18+ years) at current valuation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KFS Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 2019 annual report https://markel.gcs-web.com/static-files/4b4aa6ce-5e09-4183-89b8-93592777556f Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Can someone help me understand why MKL is getting particularly punished today? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spekulatius Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Can someone help me understand why MKL is getting particularly punished today? It’s not just MKL, TRV and other insurance cos are also getting crushed. I think it’s due to the huge rate cut, which is going to impact their fixed income earnings. neither MKL nor TRV are particularly vulnerable because both are more short tail insurers, it’s the long tail insurers that can’t reprice their policies and have huge issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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