Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Doug McGregor – RBC Capital Markets.
Doug McGregor – RBC Capital Markets
Hi, good morning. I just wanted to confirm a few numbers that you mentioned in your preamble, Scott. First, you said that there was about 19 1/2 points within the Americas of adverse asbestos development, but you said that was gross asbestos development. Did you also mention that there was 5.8 points of favorable development within that same division?
Scott Donovan
Yes, let me go through the numbers, Doug. The Americas division combined ratio is 101.2, and there's two different things going on. First, we had favorable development on current year CAT, and that primarily was a release of Ike-related reserves that we had established in the third quarter.
Okay, on top of that we saw unfavorable loss development of 19.5 points. A component of that included $20 million of strengthening for asbestos, the remainder there Doug, would have been for other years, other types of losses.
Doug McGregor – RBC Capital Markets
Okay thanks, and second, if you could – you mentioned with your investment reallocation to a lot of munis, you said that it was a 4.1% yield and you said it was a 5% taxable equivalent?
Scott Donovan
That is correct.
Doug McGregor – RBC Capital Markets
Is that for the whole portfolio or just the fixed income allocation?
Scott Donovan
No, that would be the entire portfolio, so you're comparing the 4.1% for the entire portfolio with a tax equivalent of 5% for the entire portfolio.
Doug McGregor – RBC Capital Markets
Okay, that's helpful, and I guess any thought on buy-backs. I mean it looks like your premiums aren't anticipated to – they might be flat even in a best case scenario, and it sounds like you're looking at it a little bit down.
Are you looking at buy-backs or do you want to sort of keep maybe a little extra capital in reserve for any anticipated improvement?
Andy Barnard
On that point, we still have approximately $150 million outstanding under our existing buy-back authorization. We do think that Odysseys' long-term prospects are very favorable, but we're going to balance any additional buy-backs against our view of market prospects.
As we've said, right now we have not seen a whole lot of market hardening other than in the property CAT area. As the year goes by, that's something that we're going to be watching closely. So there is the possibility that we may buy back more stock, but there are a lot of different considerations that go into that decision making.
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