White Mountains Insurance Analyst Day - Introductory Comments
White Mountains Insurance (WTM) held its annual analyst
meeting on July 17, and I finally got around to listening to the webcast. The URL is here if you want to listen yourself.
I
wrote a post on the Reserve Issue at WTM, and this is a summary of the
balance of Ray Barrette's introductory comments.
Introductory
Remarks
After discussing the reserve issue at WTM Re, Barrette
talked about undeployed capital at WTM and the plans for its use. He then used
that as a vehicle to launch into a defense of the Berkshire transaction (buying
Berkshire’s share of WTM). WTM is buying back 1/6 of the outstanding shares
of WTM from Berkshire Hathaway. They believe that this is a prudent use of its
capital.
Barrette said, “so $485 was the price and we hit the bid and I
think when you look back five years from now or ten years from now, whether it
was $485 or $450 it will have been a good deal for the company...We think the
deal will close in the third quarter and we are happy with it.”
Barrette
then hinted that share buybacks would restart if the price continued to stay
down in the mid $400 range.
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