Von der Leyen elogia proposta de Trump de dar garantias de segurança à Ucrânia

[Pata-Hari]

Para os links e para outros comentários ir à fonte original:


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1204319 ... whats_news

Buffett Warns
Insurance Business
May Get Tougher
Berkshire Reports Drop
Of 18% in Quarterly Net;
A Swipe at Lenders
By MIKE BARRIS and KAREN RICHARDSON
March 1, 2008; Page B3

"That party is over."

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett, in the billionaire investor's widely followed annual letter for investors, warned that the insurance business is likely to get tougher in 2008. (Full Berkshire Hathaway Report)

Berkshire posted an 18% drop in fourth-quarter net income on lower investment gains and a drop in insurance-underwriting fees. "It's a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008," he wrote.


The Omaha, Neb., investment holding company said the quarter's $597 million in investment gains compares with $715 million a year earlier.

Berkshire's operating earnings, which exclude investment gains, were $2.35 billion, compared with $2.87 billion a year earlier.

Insurance-underwriting earnings fell 46%, while insurance-investment earnings rose 12%. Earnings at the company's noninsurance businesses fell 8.5%.

Despite anticipation that Mr. Buffett might reveal the names of four candidates he has chosen to succeed him in the role of chief investment officer, he referred to them only as "young to middle-aged, well-to-do to rich, and all wish to work for Berkshire for reasons that go beyond compensation." He said they all currently manage "substantial sums" elsewhere and "all have indicated a strong interest in coming to Berkshire if called."

Expanding on his view that insurance-industry profit margins will fall in 2008, Mr. Buffett said: "Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise. Even if the U.S. has its third consecutive catastrophe-light year, industry profit margins will probably shrink by four percentage points or so. ... So be prepared for lower insurance earnings during the next few years."

Berkshire is a conglomerate in the most diverse, decentralized sense of the word. Mr. Buffett, one of the world's three richest men, presides over companies making everything from candy to underpants, with only minimal control exerted from the main office.

SEE MORE


• Full Berkshire report
• Excerpts: 'Financial Folly'Many in the financial markets have been looking to Mr. Buffett over the past year as a white knight. As the subprime-mortgage crisis widened last summer, bankers and investors speculated that Berkshire would help bail out or buy troubled mortgage lenders or their assets. Mr. Buffett put an end to speculation that he would bail out the beleaguered bond insurers in December when he announced the launch of Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp., or BHAC, a new insurer that guarantees municipal bonds, and has effectively been taking market share from incumbents such as Ambac Financial Group Inc. and MBIA Inc., which have been struggling to keep their triple-A credit ratings.

In recent days, rating agencies have bestowed triple-A ratings on municipal bonds insured by the new Berkshire venture, months before competitors and some analysts predicted. On Friday, Maryland's insurance department granted BHAC a license to do business in that state. The company has already guaranteed more than 100 municipal-bond offerings, including debt issued by New York City, where it received its first license.

Earlier in February, Mr. Buffett also offered to reinsure up to $800 billion in municipal bonds already guaranteed by Ambac, MBIA and rival FGIC Corp. in the event these companies were unable to buttress their credit ratings with more capital. Ambac rejected the offer, and to date, none of the companies have acknowledged accepting it.

In his annual letter Friday, Mr. Buffett couldn't resist a swipe at financial firms, including Wall Street banks and other lenders, that have been hit hard by their exposure to the deteriorating mortgage market.

"As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed," Mr. Buffett, 77 years old, wrote. "You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out -- and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."

Mr. Buffett has been widely viewed as the buyer of last resort by troubled financial companies, and he has said he reviewed numerous offers over the past year to buy these firms' assets in exchange for capital.

Berkshire's results come after five former executives of subsidiary General Reinsurance Corp., and American International Group Inc., were convicted Monday on charges accusing them of helping to deceive AIG investors through a sham transaction in 2000. The trial featured testimony about Mr. Buffett, who wasn't charged and denied wrongdoing.

Returning to a recurring theme in his letters, Mr. Buffett lamented the status of the U.S. dollar and blamed, again, federal-government policies.

"In developing a sensible trade policy, the U.S. should not single out countries to punish or industries to protect. Nor should we take actions likely to evoke retaliatory behavior that will reduce America's exports, true trade that benefits both our country and the rest of the world," he wrote. "Our legislators should recognize, however, that the current imbalances are unsustainable and should therefore adopt policies that will materially reduce them sooner rather than later. Otherwise our $2 billion daily of force-fed dollars to the rest of the world may produce global indigestion of an unpleasant sort."

Mr. Buffett has been betting against the dollar through futures contracts and investments since 2002, although the majority of Berkshire's revenues are denominated in dollars.