I made the front page of Whitney Tilson's new publication - Value Investor Insight.

Whitney and John Heins bill the interview as follows:

Globe-hopping value investor explains why he loves the education business, how to identify valuable brands, where he's finding international ideas and why he's interested in EVCI, Todhunter International and OZ Holding.

Check here for details:

Guy Spier in the BRK issue of Value Investor Insight

I would be remiss if I did not thank a few people. Whitney and John Heins did a great job of interviewing me. My friend who first said that any good idea has an original provenance is Michael Broudo. He works at Mark Asset Management. The work that I did on Todhunter was done with close help and collaboration from Steve Gilberg of Happyhours. Weetabix was a great idea that I originally started researching after reading an interview with Tom Russo. Much of my thinking about brands originated with Tom - who has some great discussions of brands in the Outstanding Investor Digest.

I originally learned about Neue Zuercher Zeiting from two investors independently. One is Bill Strong of Equinox Partners. The other is Peter Cundill of Peter Cundill and Associates.

Posted by Guy Spier at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

http://www.bullresearch.de/news/news_detail.asp?NewsNr=272236

Posted by Guy Spier at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

My sense is that AIG is the subject of a witch hunt, and a board of directors that, in a post Enron world, is just a little trigger - happy.

Article on AIG for Knowledge@Wharton

For a very useful background & set of introductory links to Finite Risk insurance check this engtry on Doug Simpson's blog.

I reviewed posts on the Yahoo.com AIG message board yesterday. A number of commenters imply that AIG's woes with Elliot Spitzer are reminiscent of Enron, Worldcom etc.

Two things strike me. Firstly, the nature magnitude of the transactions in question is dwarfed by AIG's earnings, which themselves are exceeded by AIG's cash flows from operations. Secondly, upon reviewing the recent 8K in which AIG announces a possible charge to book value, I am struck by how the transactions tended to have a zero effect on Net Income, but instead, were used ot manipulate profitability in a particular line of business.

One transaction, for example, converted losses in the Auto Insurance line into capital losses - which would have been reported elsewhere in the income statement.

This to me points to Greenberg's hubris, and desire to make the results reflect his vanity more than wholesale attempt to mislead.

Posted by Guy Spier at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments ()