Fairfax and Thomas Cook

When Fairfax financial invested into Thomas Cook, every Tom, Dick and Harry went out and bought Thomas Cook in India as they thought they were buying into the 'Warren Buffett of Canada'. The 20% compounder, value investor supreme.

So, we decided to look at Fairfax financials - the actual parent company - and look at their performance versus Berkshire and Markel and see how the numbers stack up. The table below explains itself.

While this is not representative of what Thomas Cook will do, one must look carefully at how Prem has performed in the last 10 to 15 years. Please note that the annual change is Book Value change, there is no point in tracking the stock performance.

If you take out the first few years of Fairfax, it is a very different story.


FairFax Financials	100 $ Invested	Annual Change
	100
1998	130.0	30
1999	179.4	38
2000	170.4	-5
2001	134.6	-21
2002	144.1	7
2003	188.7	31
2004	186.8	-1
2005	156.9	-16
2006	171.1	9
2007	261.7	53
2008	316.7	21
2009	421.2	33
2010	429.6	2
2011	416.7	-3
2012	433.4	4
2013	390.1	-10
1998 to 2013	9.5%
2003 to 2013	7.5%
2008 to 2013	4.3%

Berkshire Hathaway	100 $ Invested	Annual Change
	100
1998	148.3	48.3
1999	149.0	0.5
2000	158.7	6.5
2001	148.9	-6.2
2002	163.8	10
2003	198.2	21
2004	219.0	10.5
2005	233.0	6.4
2006	275.9	18.4
2007	306.2	11
2008	276.8	-9.6
2009	331.6	19.8
2010	374.7	13
2011	392.0	4.6
2012	448.4	14.4
2013	530.0	18.2
1998 to 2013	11.8%
2003 to 2013	10.3%
2008 to 2013	13.9%

Markel	100 $ Invested	Annual Change
	100
1998	118.4	18.4
1999	105.2	-11.2
2000	157.5	49.7
2001	169.5	7.7
2002	180.9	6.7
2003	215.4	19.1
2004	258.1	19.8
2005	267.0	3.4
2006	352.6	32.1
2007	407.0	15.4
2008	340.9	-16.2
2009	433.6	27.2
2010	500.8	15.5
2011	540.2	7.9
2012	619.7	14.7
2013	732.1	18.1
1998 to 2013	14.2%
2003 to 2013	13.0%
2008 to 2013	16.5%

Disclosure: Long Fairfax for a very strange reason and a small portion of the portfolio. No position in Thomas Cook