What’s New: In Brief (September 29, 2008)

Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (TSX and NYSE: FFH) has entered into an agreement to purchase roughly 9.5 million common shares of Ridley Inc. (TSX: RCL) from its Australian parent, Ridley Corporation Limited, for Cdn$81 million.
The transaction, expected to close Oct. 20, 2008, is subject to certain closing conditions, Fairfax notes in a release.
“The shares are being purchased for investment purposes and Fairfax may acquire additional shares from time to time in accordance with applicable laws,” the company notes.

Benfield has launched a financial modelling tool that assists (re)insurers to better calculate the risks inherent in their business, in line with rating agency and solvency requirements.
CRAFT (Curve for Risk Analysis Fitting Tool) enables users to fit loss severity distributions to loss experience data, creating a more accurate impression of a company’s financial risk profile, according to a release.
Modelling to a high level of detail is particularly important in the current financial environment given the challenges that are being faced by the industry, such as decreasing reinsurance rates and lower investment income, the company adds.
CRAFT allows for a mixture of data and constraints, such as historical losses and a certain Probable Maximum Loss (PML) amount, so the distribution can fit against all information. Meanwhile, it enables fitting against subsets of the data, excluding any certain outliers.