berkshire agrees to write $800mn

Headline from the Insurance Insider , 25 June.

"Berkshire Hathaway's reinsurance chief Ajit Jain has agreed to write lines totalling $800mn on Suncorp's main open market cat treaty while on a recent trip to Australia, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Combined with the roughly $200mn that Berkshire had already agreed to write on the New Zealand buydown, this takes the group's single-event excess of loss exposure as high as $1bn.

Sources said that the Berkshire share was equivalent to around 15 percent of the open market placement.

Some more.....

29 June 2012

"Berkshire Hathaway's deals with Australian mega-cedant Suncorp have sucked circa A$1.5bn of event limit out of the open market at 1 July and taken the heat out of a renewal that was expected to be difficult and expensive.

As a consequence, The Insurance Insider understands that Suncorp has managed to escape the punitive rate increases that some reinsurers were talking about privately a couple of months ago.

Sources said that the open market placement had gotten home relatively easily......."

A while ago I read the company would not make an announcement until the deal was done, estimated to be by June 30. Must be due soon???