Does White Mountains [WTM] fall in the same nice-upside, downside-is-boredom category?
JB: Yes. This is a diversified insurance company, with divisions offering commercial and property insurance, reinsurance and auto insurance sold directly online. This was originally Jack Byrne’s company, who when he was the CEO of GEICO helped teach Warren Buffett about the insurance business. The board and management team are very deep and have done a superb job allocating capital, through buying and selling insurance companies and in investing what is now more than $20 billion in assets. They alternate over time between intelligently growing when the insurance business is under stress and pulling back when everyone else is pouring capital into the business. Over the past decade they’ve grown book value per share at a low- to mid-teens annualized rate. One problem for the stock in the past couple of years is that that book-value growth can be lumpy. There in a lull right now as the insurance cycle has firmly turned downward and they also haven’t had as many capital “events” to unlock
