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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (56509)	1/1/2016 5:08:54 PM
From: bruwin	Respond to of 78750

" ... since BRK is still an insurance* company at it's core"* I assume you're referring to Berkshire Hathaway's ownership of Private Companies and not it's holdings in Public companies ? As a matter of interest, with regard to Private company ownership, I came across the following link ... investopedia.com Seems that McLane and Burlington run 1 and 2 with 'Geico'(Insurance) at 3. Based on the Revenues stated in that link, it seems that insurance related companies, Geico and BH Reinsurance Group, had a combined Revenue of $(20.5 + 10.1)billion = $30.6bil. which runs 2nd. to McLane at $46.6bil.

To: Spekulatius who wrote (56509)	1/2/2016 7:13:05 PM
From: Graham Osborn	Respond to of 78750

The degree to which book value is useful for insurers should be related to the percentage of the portfolio for which investee statements are consolidated (i.e. what percentage of the portfolio is majority owned investees). To the extent that Berkshire has more majority owned investees than other insurers, the importance of its BV multiple relative to other measures should be reduced (i.e. it looks more like a conglomerate). In other words, comparing BRK's P/B with other more "traditional" insurers may not be an apples to apples comparison. Whatever a traditional insurer is - that's another discussion ;)