Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator’s Instructions) Our first question comes from Donna Halverstadt.
Donna Halverstadt – Goldman Sachs
Good morning gentlemen.
Curt S. Culver
Good morning.
Donna Halverstadt – Goldman Sachs
I had a couple of questions; one I wanted to ask about was what level of tax and lost bonds you left to year-end ’08. And just more generally as a follow-on, if you could talk about the use and such as a source of OPCO liquidity? And if you could also talk about the quantum and timing of cash recovery from captive. And in turn, I’m just trying to get a better feel for how much of your investment portfolio you may need to sell this year to cover claims payments.
Curt S. Culver
There’s a lot of stuff there. Donna, the tax and loss bonds, we had about 400 million left at year-end to redeem, and I believe we redeemed those this last week, so that we won’t have any further redemptions. And I think last year we redeemed somewhere over almost close to $700 million. So that’s part of the cash-flow increase for the year. You see, we wound up at about $82 billion in cash and investments.
A significant part of our portfolio has been shorter in duration, as you can tell from the lower yields. So we’ve already planned for that, this year to have more than enough cash available to pay claims. And of course we also have premiums and investment income, obviously. So, I don’t see any significant change in the portfolio during the year, we planned for that already.
You had another question, I think on captives?
Donna Halverstadt – Goldman Sachs
Just the timing and amount of cash recoveries. But also on captives, your (inaudible 00:04:39) points out when treaties can be terminated, and looks like some have been. I was curious if you can give us any color on the amount of reinsurance that you now won’t get from those arrangements that you would have otherwise been entitled to, for the ones that you’ve terminated.
Michael Zimmerman
Well, let me try to answer that question. The captives are required to maintain a minimum level of capital in order for us to include new business. If they drop below that level, they’re put into run-off, meaning past business continues seeding and is still funded by the trust account, but there would be no new business.
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