Contest: Which Fairfax Private Companies Are Going Public?

[Pedro]

Lol retail crapco. Think they'll name it that?

In going out to left field - My vote goes to a minority interest in one of the larger insurers who have consistently done well YOY.  Similiar to what they did early in early 2000s with Lombard I believe. I could be off but I believe this was done years ago and then later bought back

[petec]

Lol retail crapco. Think they'll name it that?

In going out to left field - My vote goes to a minority interest in one of the larger insurers who have consistently done well YOY.  Similiar to what they did early in early 2000s with Lombard I believe. I could be off but I believe this was done years ago and then later bought back

It was done with Odyssey but under duress and I can’t think why they’d do it now. The point is to monetise investments.

[Xerxes]

Petec
What private asset on holding company B/S are you thinking of :

I am seeing cash + some receivables as shown on page 3 of Q3 results showing the consolidated B/S.
everything else rolls up under $39 billion as shown as “portfolio investments”

[Xerxes]

In my opinion they will sell Vault Insurance.
Wild guess 

[Parsad]

In my opinion they will sell Vault Insurance.
Wild guess

Yeah, your out of the contest!  If your post's timestamp were only 10 minutes earlier, you would have won.     Cheers!

[Pedro]

No indication of the price ? Should we assume it's a small book that was sold?

Wasn't Scott the man Prem mentioned is leading the Fairfax worldwide initiative?  I asumed by the language in that press release that he is leaving FFH altogether.   He may have had a required time to stay after the  acquisition of allied so maybe his time was up but he seemed like someone they wanted to keep to run their global platform.

[Cigarbutt]

^Vault is quite small but potentially promising.

It's a niche reciprocal insurance entity formed in 1997 that is in a start-up mode. At end of 2018, it had earned premiums of 2.3m and capital surplus of 47.9m, funded by surplus notes (Allied World participating, majority 80% control). It looks like it was aiming to expand in the US.

This is inferred indirectly but Mr. Carmilani perhaps wanted a challenge to build from scratch. Talent leaving can be concerning but there may be valid personal reasons.

[petec]

Wasn't Scott the man Prem mentioned is leading the Fairfax worldwide initiative?  I asumed by the language in that press release that he is leaving FFH altogether.   He may have had a required time to stay after the  acquisition of allied so maybe his time was up but he seemed like someone they wanted to keep to run their global platform.

I got the sense he was meant to be a Fairfax lifer and possibly Bernard’s heir apparent, so this is a blow.

[StubbleJumper]

Wasn't Scott the man Prem mentioned is leading the Fairfax worldwide initiative?  I asumed by the language in that press release that he is leaving FFH altogether.   He may have had a required time to stay after the  acquisition of allied so maybe his time was up but he seemed like someone they wanted to keep to run their global platform.

I got the sense he was meant to be a Fairfax lifer and possibly Bernard’s heir apparent, so this is a blow.

I would not automatically assume that this is a blow or a loss.  Situations change within companies all of the time.  It is sometimes the case that rising stars lose their shine and become problem employees -- too good to fire outright, but not the right fit to promote.  In those cases, organizations struggle to push them out and move forward. 

This is the second instance in less than a year where senior people who were seemingly leadership material have left through the side-door, with a little assistance from FFH (Paul Rivett and now Scott Carmialani).  My curiosity is piqued about why they have both left through the side door.  What the hell is going on at FFH that the company is facilitating the departure of its executives?  In the end, if there is some irreconcilable conflict between the execs and Prem, then they absolutely need to go and their departure should not be viewed as a loss.  But, we should ask why this is occurring?  Is it just chance (fooled by randomness) or is there something else going on that is unhealthy within the outfit?


SJ

[Xerxes]

Not unhealthy from the outside from where i am sitting, but in someways, i see Prem taking a big chunk of the stock in summer, as a validation that Fairfax is him, and he is Fairfax and he is going to right the ship and that it will be his strategy.

I don't see him buying the stock that big (no matter how under valued it was) if other 'rising star(s)' was slowly taking over the going forward corporate strategy.