Fairfax

I've written a new article on shareworld, on the subject of Fairfax Financial Holdings.  As it happens I like the look of them, but can't buy any shares, since my broker doesn't offer them (I'm limited to the UK, NYSE and a few selected others, but Fairfax is listed in Toronto).

Sometime in the next 3 months I need to sell my Berkshire Hathaway shares to realise the capital gain before I move to Norway (no capital gains allowance over there).  At the same time I'll be opening a brokerage account I can use from Norway - possibly with Internaxx - and that should allow me to buy shares in Fairfax.  I haven't quite decided yet, but there's a good chance I'll sell Berkshire and put some of the proceeds into Fairfax (probably not all of it, since I don't trust them quite as much as I trust Berkshire).

De La Rue - buy

3 weeks ago I wrote an article on shareworld about De La Rue.  The share price had suffered due to some quality problems, and although I thought it looked cheap, I was looking for a better entry point than 700p - preferably 600p.

Today De La Rue announced an update on the quality problems.  To me this looks like good news - the recognized financial impact so far has been a meagre £35m before tax (£25m after tax) vs a drop in market cap of almost £300m.  Although the final bill will likely be higher, I find it hard to believe it will be more than 10 times higher.

The market disagreed, and at one point De La Rue had dropped almost 10% to 640p.  I didn't manage to move quickly enough to get that price, but I was happy to buy in at 677p.  De La Rue is now just over 4% of my portfolio.

In other news I see that my views on Connaught (that there was an 80% chance of them being worth nothing) seem to have come true.  Today's announcement has put paid to any lingering hope that they might trade their way out of trouble.