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.
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Here's a photo from the visit in Laski.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
