shot duck, page-6

Very true, Stump, very true.

Ultimately its the Board's problem though. Kirk did manage to "make" the company (from the ashes of ReAC), and has "built" the company since then. But now it should be handed over to an operations man (or woman!) in my opinion - someone who can get their COR down, lift their insurance profit, and do something with that lame investment book. They are "mature" enough now not to need quota share, and have sufficient scale to negotiate a decent reinsurance package; so I am stumped as to why they feel the need to play with investors money on the off-chance Kirk will stop blocking the ball and dispatch it over the long boundary for a six!

By my calcs (looking at the timing of previous releases) CIX will release its full year in the last week of February - my guess is they will release on Thursday 25th February (just a wild guess). Between now and then I am not sure any joy will come to holders: there is more on the offer side now that there has been in a very long time; and CIX needs to "pull" its buyback order prior to any blackout period, which you would imagine we are pretty close to. I have been watching the orders on the buy side and think (big disclaimer here!) the buyback order is the 100,000 order you can see at 26.5 cents - only time will tell if I am right on that one. You would therefore expect 26.5 to hold; but then again they may get cute and see how cheap "existing shareholders" can buy back their own shares!

Want to see the end of year financials and see where that $8mm hole came from (was it covered by QS?, and was it indeed much larger before QS?). Wonder also what business line could make such a dent: had a look at their "niche portfolios" and can't, for the life of me, work out which business line was so exposed. Surely their Dawes group didn't insure a fleet of Bugatti Veyrons? Surely Clubs didn't insure the MCG? Surely, surely... (if anyone has any idea, please chime in right about now!)...

Anyway, clock is ticking. Should be interesting. You know what they say: when things look really, really bad that's usually the best time to buy...!

Regards
Kit