Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Jeff Fenwick of Cormark Securities.
Prem Watsa
Good morning Jeff.
Jeff Fenwick - Cormark Securities
Good morning. I just wanted to ask you about your P&C operations, as you stated you try to be more conservative in the way that you're writing your business and pulling back where you don’t see a lot of profitability in markets, but Crum and Northbridge both had over a 100% combined ratios, you know how much of that is just aspects of the environment that are not under your control versus, what do you think you could with respect to getting yourself closer to profitability in those operations?
Prem Watsa
Sure. The point to make is, we are in a tough market here. As Greg said, in the case of Northbridge they had a few property losses plants -- was burnt down and our building was burnt down those are significant loses in the single quarter, they can happen at anytime Jeff. And in the case of Crum they are focused on underwriting discipline.
So, we are actually quite happy with the underwriting discipline that our companies are exhibiting at this time of the recycle and our reserves are excellent. What we do is, we don't provide any guidance as you know, but at the end of the year, we will review our results and then see how the year developed and review our reserve position, but we like where we are on our reserving and our companies are demonstrating tremendous underwriting discipline, which is exactly what they need to do at this part of the cycle.
Jeff Fenwick - Cormark Securities
Okay great and one other question I have, on your net gains -- net gains on investments, Greg you described it was 300 million came from bond sales, can you spend a color on the type of bonds that were in there that you were selling?
Greg Taylor
Not all of them are from selling. So the net gains that go to the P&L. It is a mix of realized gains, but also unrealized and held for trading securities. So, it is a mix, you know what we hold now is obviously vastly increased municipal bond holdings $4.5 million, we have decreased holdings of government bonds, but we have significantly increased holdings in the corporate bonds as well.
And I will just point to you that any corporate bonds of municipal bonds for that matter that have features such as puts, calls, extendable features all of those in accounting terms are viewed as embedded options and therefore those bonds get classified has held for trading securities and any change in value in those particular bonds go through the P&L instead of through OCI.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
