Tom Gayner is deemphasizing book value as a measure of business value. Maybe a higher PB is merited as they make more acquisitions.

This is true when comparing 2011 (before Markel Ventures took hold) to 2022, but not so important when comparing 2016 to today. Even comparing now to 2011, Markel Ventures when I was searching them last around 2017 only comprised about 10% of their business, so if that part of this business warranted say a 2 x book value multiple then it would only increase the book value per share multiple of the whole Markel business by about 0.1.

Insurers were nearly uniformly cheap around 2011 - many trading near or even under book. Part of this was not just the market being generally selling at low multiples at this time, but Insurance also having been in a 'soft' market since about 2004 - so after 7 years in 2011 people have lost patience and treat it as a permanent condition. Ben Graham was particularly keen to identify when firms had temporarily poor conditions, and observed that the market treated the temporary as the permanent - so you can just buy at that time without any catalyst, and then apply extreme patience to wait it out - even if that means 7+ years. Markel was a particularly high quality one, along with Berkeley Corporation, both commanding IV10/price ratios north of 4 and I scooped those two up as my largest holdings.

- Manlobbi