Berkshire Hathaway to buy reinsurer from ING

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway on Friday reached a deal to buy a reinsurer from Dutch financial-services giant ING for $433 million (300 million euros), part of a busy week in which the Omaha, Neb.-based investment group is opening a bond insurer and buying an industrial group.
As the Dutch firm wants to concentrate on its core insurance, banking and asset management business.
ING is taking a capital loss after tax of 100 million euros this year on the sale. Berkshire Hathaway didn't immediately issue a statement on its side of the deal.
NRG, formerly called Nederlandse Reassurantie Groep, hasn't taken on new business since 1993. NRG's life reinsurance subsidiaries have been sold and a number of the remaining insurance liabilities were successfully settled, ING said.
The deal comes on the same day that Berkshire Hathaway is opening Berkshire Hathaway Assurance, a bond insurer for cities, counties and states that issue bonds to finance sewer systems, schools, hospitals and other public projects, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Many bond insurers have run into difficulty with their triple-A credit ratings in jeopardy because of the increased risk from the mortgage-related bonds they insure, which could potentially erode their capital.
The bond insurer unit will begin operations in New York before moving to California, Puerto Rico, Texas, Illinois and Florida, Buffett told the Journal.
"Ideally we'd be licensed in every state, but there's a limit to what we can do," Buffett told the newspaper.
On Christmas, Berkshire Hathaway announced a deal to buy 60% of Marmon Holdings, an industrial group owned by trusts benefiting members of the Pritzker family of Chicago, for $4.5 billion. The investment firm will buy the rest of the company over the next five to six years.
Marmon, with annual revenue of around $7 billion, holds more than 125 manufacturing and service businesses worldwide,

Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is a conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., that oversees and manages a number of subsidiary companies. Berkshire Hathaway's core business is insurance, including property and casualty insurance, reinsurance and specialty nonstandard insurance. The Company averaged a 25%+ annual return to its shareholders for the last 25 years while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt.
Warren Buffett is the company's chairman and CEO. Buffett has used the "float" provided by Berkshire Hathaway's insurance operations (a policyholder's money which it holds temporarily until claims are paid out) to finance his investments. In the early part of his career at Berkshire, he focused on long-term investments in publicly quoted stocks, but more recently he has turned to buying whole companies. Berkshire now owns a diverse range of businesses including candy production; retail, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, jewelry sales; newspaper publishing; manufacture and distribution of uniforms; and manufacture, import and distribution of footwear.