Friday, March 14, 2008

Updated Info on Fairfax's CDS Portfolio

At the end of 2007, Fairfax's CDS portfolio held the following names:

Munich Re
Ace Ina Holdings
Allianz Finance
Societe Generale
Aegon NV
Zurich Financial
Deutsche Bank
Swiss Re America
Ambac Inc
AIG
Bank of America
Barclays
Capital One Bank/Financial
Citigroup
Countrywide
Freddie Mac
Fannie Mae
Genworth Financial
Goldman Sachs
Hanover Re
JP Morgan
MBIA
MGIC
PMI Group
Radian Group
Washington Mutual
XL Capital

Of these, the ones in bold were initiated/added to during the year.

Last year, I wondered why so many property and casualty insurers were included in their CDS portfolio. The reason appears more clear now, as insurer investment losses are set to overtake those of Hurricane Katrina. These has caused the credit protection costs of many of these insurers to soar:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what filings disclose these holdings?

Anonymous said...

I assume you looked at the NAIC filings for Odyssey? If you look at the filings for US Fire, you will find the same names there.