So all the things that happen here require some planning and they also require some follow-up and if it were up to me there would be zero planning and not much more than that in the way of follow-up. But what really happens is Tyler along with a few partners does that and he has my great thanks for doing that. The investment club that has started at UVA in Delaware State, Tyler really is at a point of making the logistics of those. The story of that has been written up in the Wall Street Journal with an article by Jason Zweig. You know, again, at the Berkshire meeting yesterday, the things that start to happen philanthropically because things are going well at Markel are starting to have cascading effects and Tyler plays an important role in that.

在这里发生的一切都需要一定的规划，也需要一些后续跟进。如果只靠我，一定是零规划，后续跟进也所剩无几。但实际上，正是泰勒与几位伙伴负责这些事务，我非常感谢他。弗吉尼亚大学和德拉瓦州立大学新成立的投资俱乐部，泰勒正是在负责那些后勤工作。华尔街日报的杰森·茨威格写了一篇文章报道此事。再说一次，在昨天的伯克希尔会议上，由于马可尔经营顺利而启动的慈善举措开始产生连锁效应，泰勒在其中扮演着重要角色。

He would also be upset with me if I did not mention that there are some barcodes around here, maybe out in the lobby with QR codes. I’m travelling to Singapore in September and I know many people have come from Singapore and Malaysia and CFA Society somebody handed me their card. But if you want information about that trip and would like to attend when I’m in Singapore, I would love to see you. I’ve never been there before, but there are ways to find information about that and to check in. I want to thank Jason Ramirez and Peter Partee who are here from Markel Ventures and let me include Andrew in this. The people who have the daily interaction or whatever interaction is needed daily, monthly, quarterly, whatever these are the people who are doing that and you know, Buffett talked about what Greg Abel is doing and the people on Greg Abel’s team. These are the people within Markel that are performing those analogous roles and they make the machine work and you have my immense gratitude for that.

如果我不提一件事，泰勒肯定会介意——这里有一些条码，也许在大厅外，还有二维码。我九月要去新加坡，我知道有不少人来自新加坡和马来西亚，还有 CFA 协会的朋友给了我名片。如果你想了解那次行程并希望在我到新加坡时参加活动，我很乐意见到你。我从未去过新加坡，但可以通过这些二维码获取信息并登记。我想感谢来自马可尔创投的贾森·拉米雷斯和彼得·帕蒂，让我也把安德鲁算进去。日常互动、或日、月、季所需的各种互动，都是这些人来完成。巴菲特谈到格雷格·阿贝尔在做什么，以及他团队中的人。马可尔内部正是由这些人承担类似角色，他们让这台机器运转，对此我深表感激。

I want to thank Ken Newsome, the CEO of AMF, who’s here with us and I think in an illustrative way about the spirit of Markel. He bought his bride, Linda. So Ken and Linda are both here with us. Ken has an honoured position in the pantheon of Markel lore because AMF was the first deal Markel Ventures ever did. And if there wasn’t a first one, there couldn’t be a next one and the one after that and the one after the one and I would have been cut off if AMF had not worked and it has worked, has worked beautifully. Ken was the CEO when we did the deal in 2005. He is still the CEO today. Draw your own conclusions but things are working well there. And frankly, Ken had his leadership group for a management meeting just a week ago and he had a dinner. He was kind enough to invite me to. And he said one of the nicest things I’ve ever heard and I want to repeat that because I think it means so much. So when he was introducing and starting off the dinner, what he said about me was, “You can fake caring but you can’t fake showing up.” You know, and he was thanking me for showing up and showing up consistently and that is what needs to happen for true relationships to be built. It doesn’t happen on one visit or one connection or one Zoom call, it happens within-person face-to-face interaction over and over and over and over and over again. So Ken, thank you for that compliment. I deeply appreciate it.

我要感谢 AMF 的首席执行官肯·纽瑟姆，他今天与我们同在，这也形象地体现了马可尔的精神。他还带来了他的爱妻琳达，所以肯和琳达都在现场。肯在马可尔的传说中占据崇高地位，因为 AMF 是马可尔创投完成的第一笔交易。如果没有第一笔，就不会有第二笔、第三笔，甚至后续任何交易；如果 AMF 当初没成功，我早已被“腰斩”。事实证明 AMF 进展顺利、非常顺利。2005 年交易时肯就是 CEO，如今仍是 CEO。结论自寻，但那里的运作良好。老实说，肯在一周前召开管理会议并设晚宴，邀请我参加，他说了一句我听过最动人的话，我必须重述，因为意义重大。他在晚宴开场介绍我时说：“关心可以装出来，但出席装不出来。”他感谢我持续到场，而这正是真正关系得以建立所必需的。这种关系不是一次拜访、一次联系、一次 Zoom 通话就能形成，而是一次又一次的面对面互动。所以肯，谢谢你的夸奖，我由衷感激。

We have Tommy Clements and Dumas Garrett here from VSC, our Fire Protection business and this is the tale of Markel Ventures and one of the ways in which we will be able to put capital to work. And believe me, Tommy needs no encouragement about that but he’s going and going and going and the flames burn brightly no matter how much any of us might try to suppress them with what are words or contracts. But Tommy, thank you so much for doing it. There’s also someone who I want to introduce who has an important role in Markel Ventures or at least she used to but she still sort of does and that is my bride, Susan Gayner, who was the CEO of Parkland Ventures for many years.

来自 VSC（我们的消防防护业务）的汤米·克莱门茨和杜马斯·加勒特也在现场，这是马可尔创投的故事之一，也是我们运用资本的方式之一。相信我，汤米无需任何鼓励，他一直在前进、前进、再前进；不论我们用言语还是合同多么想“灭火”，那股火焰依旧熊熊燃烧。汤米，十分感谢你的付出。另外还有一位我要介绍，她在马可尔创投中扮演了重要角色——或者说曾经如此，现在多少仍是——那就是我的妻子苏珊·盖纳，她多年来一直担任帕克兰创投的首席执行官。

Now I know for a fact, for a hard fact, that she would not want me to tell you what I am about to tell you. But I’m going to tell you anyway, and that is, you know, in preparation for the Omaha meeting and this speaks perhaps sometimes to my overreliance on serendipity rather than planning and why I need detailed people around me. So as Shelby Davis pointed out last night and Shelby I don’t know if you’re here. Is Davis here? Shelby here?

我确切知道，她绝不希望我接下来告诉各位的事情。但我还是要说，这也许说明我过度依赖机缘巧合而非规划，也解释了我为何需要细节控在身边。为了准备这次奥马哈会议——正如昨晚谢尔比·戴维斯指出的那样，谢尔比，我不知道你是否在现场。戴维斯在吗？谢尔比在吗？

\[00:14:19] Andrew Crowley: There he is.

\[00:14:19] Andrew Crowley：他在那儿。

\[00:14:19] Tom Gayner: Okay, well, there he is. There he is. Okay. Yes. Well, as I’ve written about Shelby in the annual report several times and some of the Council and the help that he’s offered me, well, he had some pretty tough words for me when I shook his hand after us not having seen one another for a year or two. He says he’s gotten big. Well, it’s true, I might have gained a pound or two, so in anticipation of that, I did buy a new suit for this day. So I was in New York City and I walked to a store where I bought things before and tried something on, they take the chalk marks, and the measurements and everything to make sure it fits, it went soon off the rack suit, and then you know they do the alterations and then they mail it to me. So I had that suit, had lined up. This is going to be my Omaha suit. So I tried it on this morning and as I put it in the pants like, oh no. They had not done the alteration step. So, fortunately, Susan hops to it and she has some safety pins, and she’s tried safety pinning some stuff and says, well, that’s better than nothing. It’s not going to hold up. But you know, let’s go with that. And then she said wait, wait, I’ve got a sewing kit. A sewing kit. So my pants were altered this morning by Susan Gayner. She does many things.

\[00:14:19] Tom Gayner：好的，他在那儿。他在那儿。好的。是的。嗯，我在年度报告里多次写到谢尔比，也提到了他给我的一些建议和帮助。我们一年多没见面了，握手时他对我说了几句挺严厉的话，他说我胖了。确实，我可能重了一两磅，所以提前给今天买了套新西装。我在纽约去之前买过东西的店试穿，他们用粉笔做记号、量尺寸，确保合身；这本是一套现成西装，然后他们改好寄给我。所以那套西装准备好了，就是我的奥马哈西装。今天早上我试穿时，刚把裤子穿上就发现糟糕——改裤步骤根本没做。幸好苏珊立刻行动，用安全别针别了几下，说“总比没有好，但撑不住”。接着她说“等等，我有缝纫包！”结果今天早晨，我的裤子就由苏珊·盖纳改好了。她能做的事情真多。

Now, on Memorial Day of this year, we will be celebrating our 43rd year of marriage. And this is another thing, I mean this deeply romantically, but she doesn’t sort of hear it this way but I’ll share it with you all and you can judge. For those of you who are fans of the movie The Godfather, this morning’s story illustrates that. I tell her she is the snub nose revolver taped to a toilet in the back of an Italian restaurant of my life, so thank you.

今年阵亡将士纪念日，我们将庆祝结婚 43 周年。我怀着深情浪漫地说另一件事，她可能不会这么听，但我还是分享给各位评判。若你是电影《教父》的粉丝，今天早上的故事就是例证。我告诉她，她是我人生中那把贴在意大利餐厅后面厕所里的短管左轮手枪，谢谢。

We have some people from CapTech here with us: Tom Krieger, Paul Given, and Bree Basham. We just met this time. But thank you to CapTech for being here. You’ve done very well. Here’s one story I want to tell very, very quickly. So for those of you for many years you know I give the Frederick Wolfe Award. For many years, the recipient of the Frederick Wolfe Award has been Frederick Wolfe, hence the name of the award. The way that all happened was we bought Frederick’s company probably about 15 years ago. It was a German insurance operation and so that deal was done by the people at MINT. I had no part of it. I had never met Frederick but this meeting happened and this guy came up and introduced himself to me and it was Frederick Wolfe. The deal had been done before this meeting. The closing I think was scheduled after it but in that interim, in that time, Frederick Wolfe on his own initiative and on his own dime flew to Omaha to come to this meeting to absorb the Berkshire stuff and to see us and to experience Markel completely of his own initiative. So that’s my kind of person. Well, guess what? We have a current new winner, and a couple of people have done this over the years, of the Frederick Wolfe Award and that is Trey and Trey if you would stand up and want to tell us the story here.

我们有几位来自 CapTech 的朋友：Tom Krieger、Paul Given 和 Bree Basham。我们这次才第一次见面，非常感谢 CapTech 的到来，你们做得很棒。我想快速讲一个故事。多年里，你们知道我颁发 Frederick Wolfe 奖。多年来，获奖者一直是 Frederick Wolfe，因此以他命名。事情的经过是，我们大约 15 年前收购了 Frederick 的公司，那是一家德国保险业务，由 MINT 团队完成交易。我并未参与，也从未见过 Frederick，但在这次会议上，这位先生走过来自我介绍，他就是 Frederick Wolfe。交易在会议前已谈妥，正式交割应在之后。但在那段时间里，Frederick Wolfe 完全出于自愿、自掏腰包飞到奥马哈参加会议，吸收伯克希尔的内容，见我们，亲身体验 Markel，全凭自发。这正是我欣赏的类型。现在猜猜？我们有一位新的获奖者，过去几年也有人这样做，那就是 Trey——Trey，请起立，给大家讲讲你的故事。

So Trey joined us a couple of years ago. He was in corporate accounting. He moved over to the Markel Ventures team to do accounting work there. And you know, we’re talking about what’s going on and turns out Trey had bought airline tickets, got in the room himself, and said can I come to the, you know, the party and stuff? And I said absolutely. So this is the initiative that you see of people coming. And so Trey Rosettie, thank you so much. And I want to make an illustration and might come back out later as well. Oftentimes, I’m asked the question of how you keep the culture going. So yeah, I understand the special. I understand these values, but how does that keep going? Well, Trey is an example of with no effort from me or any of us. This is completely self-initiative to do this sort of thing and you know I hope he feels welcomed and responded to and that’s how the next Trey and the next Frederick is going to come to this. There is a vibe and a value system that just gets transmitted somehow and it happens over and over again. I’m coming towards the end of things, but I want to we have a couple of our directors here and they play a spectacular role in assuring the continuation of the values and they have a role that’s somewhat interesting in that they don’t really know how to keep it going but they know how to screw it up.

Trey 几年前加入我们，最初在公司会计部门，后来转到 Markel Ventures 团队做会计工作。聊天时才知道，Trey 自己买了机票，自行订房间，还问我能不能参加聚会之类活动？我说当然可以。这就是主动性的体现。Trey Rosettie，非常感谢你。我想借此说明，并可能稍后再提到。常有人问我如何维系企业文化。我理解其独特性，也理解这些价值观，但怎样延续？Trey 就是例子：无需我或任何人出力，他完全自发地做这事。我希望他感到被欢迎且得到回应，如此下一个 Trey、下一个 Frederick 才会来到这里。有一种氛围和价值体系以某种方式不断传递、循环发生。事情接近尾声，但我想提到我们几位董事，他们在确保价值观延续方面发挥了杰出作用；有趣的是，他们未必知道如何让文化持续，却知道如何把事情搞砸。

So not doing that is a very important part of what it means to be a director and Charlie Munger talks about that a lot. It’s not seeking brilliance, it’s avoiding stupidity. So they are the guardians of the gate that keep the culture and hold us accountable, that our actions conform and are in the spirit of Markel. So we got Larry Kenningham, Gretchen Harris and Morgan Housel here with us. So thank you all for making the trip. And then as I close out before we turn things over, some of the people that make all this thing happen, all these happen, we call them executive business partners. I think they should be called ninjas instead. Let me introduce them a little bit. So, Lisa Hammersley, if you would stand up and say hi, I know you don’t want to but you’re going to anyway. Lisa worked specifically with Andrew and the ventures team, but Andrew, what’s your phrase for her?

因此，避免搞砸正是董事职责的重要部分，查理·芒格经常强调——不是追求聪明，而是避免愚蠢。他们是守门人，维护文化、监督我们，让我们的行动符合并体现 Markel 精神。Larry Kenningham、Gretchen Harris 和 Morgan Housel 均在现场，感谢各位远道而来。最后，在交棒前，我要介绍一些让这一切成真的人，我们称他们为“执行业务伙伴”，我觉得该叫“忍者”。让我简单介绍一下。Lisa Hammersley，请站起来打声招呼，我知道你不愿意，但还是得站。Lisa 专门与 Andrew 及创投团队合作。Andrew，你给她的称呼是什么？

\[00:20:32] Andrew Crowley: She’s Markel’s front porch. So there you go.

\[00:20:32] Andrew Crowley：她是马可尔的“前廊”，就这样。

\[00:20:36] Tom Gayner: Thank you. And an extra heart and extra hands. So thank you, Lisa. Christina Matisse, wave and say hi. And we’ll get to the rest of this story in just a second but you might remember my partner Cynthia Federman had, you know, the kidney transplant that we talked about a little bit last year. And Christina, I think started 48 hours before the phone rang that Cynthia is, you know, the kidney’s here and when that phone rings, you don’t say wait a minute. I have to do more training for my replacement. You go now. So with 48 hours of crisp training. Christina picked everything up and gave it to Mr. Bee. So thank you. Shannon Martin. Shannon works primarily with Jeremy but does the things behind the scenes that make all this work and she has my epic gratitude. And now, finally, so remember last year when I did the film and I said get well Cynthia on the selfie. I’ll remember that. Alright, let’s just in the chorus do that again. Get well, Cynthia, right? Again, come on. One, two, three… Get well, Cynthia. Cynthia Federman, stand up. So, among other things, you people are faith healers. It worked. She got better. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

\[00:20:36] Tom Gayner：谢谢你，再加一颗心、一双手。Lisa，感谢你。Christina Matisse，挥手打个招呼。稍后我们会补完这个故事——你们或许记得，我的伙伴 Cynthia Federman 去年做了肾移植。Christina 入职 48 小时后接到电话：肾源到了！这种电话不能说“等等，我还要培训接班人”，必须立刻行动。她在短短 48 小时的快速培训后接管全部工作并交给 Bee 先生，感谢你。Shannon Martin 主要与 Jeremy 合作，幕后完成让一切运转的事项，我非常感激。最后，记得去年我自拍时写的 “Cynthia 早日康复” 吗？我们齐声再来一次。预备，一二三……Cynthia 早日康复！Cynthia Federman，请站起来！你们简直是信仰治疗师——奏效了，她真的康复了。谢谢！

With that, let’s start things off with the Q\&A and again we’ll go to roughly about noon. I understand when people have to leave that we have a tradition of having a particular person ask the first question. It comes from the fact that you know when this branch was a lot smaller and there maybe were only 20 or 25 people there. There was a friend of mine named David Winters. Some of you may remember David, that’s remember David. He was to my left and apparently, I don’t see that well peripherally out of my left or something. So David was waving his hand at different times. Any questions, anybody, anybody at all? And David over there. So from that point on, we always gave him the first question to make sure he got his question and then a gentleman named Jeff Stacy picked up the baton to carry on. He’s otherwise engaged to it. Although I think he’s coming to Richmond. So you’ll see him there. But my friend Mark Hughes has agreed to pick up the baton of being the first questioner. These are not questions that are planned. I don’t know any of the questions that are that are coming. He asked the first question last year and we’ll start off over there. Can put the lights up a little bit higher if you would. We want to see you talking. So if you ask a question, Mark, if you would grab the mic over there and you will tell us your name, perhaps where you’re from, if you’re a Markel shareholder, that’d be great and we’ll go back and forth between the two microphones. Have the lights up, if you would. So people can see their way to the microphones, but with that, Mark.

好了，我们进入问答环节，预计持续到中午左右。我知道有人可能提前离场，我们有个传统：由特定朋友率先提问。早年聚会只有二十几人，我的朋友 David Winters 坐在左手边，我余光不好，总看不到他举手，于是从那以后就把第一个提问机会留给他。后来 Jeff Stacy 接棒，如今他另有事务，不过他可能会来里士满。我的朋友 Mark Hughes 再次接棒成为首位提问者。问题都未预设，我也不知道会被问什么。他去年也是第一个提问者。请把灯调亮些，好让大家看清。Mark，请拿起话筒，报上姓名、来自何处、是否是马可尔股东，然后我们在两个麦克风间轮流提问。灯亮些，方便走向麦克风。交给你了，Mark。

更好理解保险业的阅读推荐

\[00:23:29] Mark Hughes: Good morning, Tom. Thank you for putting this on. Thank you to all the Markel associates here. Thank you, Susan Gayner, for being Tom’s margin of safety. So that doesn’t go off the rails. My question is, you know, I’ve been a shareholder for 29 years. I’ve been reading Markel’s financials for 30 years, your competitors, et cetera. Still, I find myself with gaps in my knowledge of the insurance industry. Like a lot of people here, I’m a generalist, not an insurance industry specialist. Are there things that you could recommend reading? Is there an intelligent investor in the insurance industry? A podcast? YouTube video? Something that might let us generalist, you know, enhance our knowledge of the broader insurance industry. Anything you could mention to us. Is there anybody we should follow would be appreciated. Thank you.

\[00:23:29] Mark Hughes：早上好，Tom。感谢你举办活动，也感谢所有马可尔同事。还要感谢 Susan Gayner，成为 Tom 的安全边际，让一切有序进行。我做股东 29 年，阅读马可尔财报 30 年，也看竞争对手的资料，但仍觉得对保险业了解不足。我是通才而非保险专家。你能推荐哪些读物吗？保险领域有没有类似《聪明的投资者》的书？或者播客、YouTube 视频，能让我们这些通才加深对保险业的理解？任何建议、值得关注的人或资源，都将感激不尽。谢谢。

\[00:24:22] Tom Gayner: Well, great. Thank you. The challenge in answering that question is that you presume that we know. And there is an irreducible amount of black box and uncertainty and not knowing that you’re just never going to get beyond. And I don’t mean to single you out for that, I can promise you that is the case for us too. So when somebody says, you know, their combined ratio was 94.3 or 97.2. or 91.1. I said that those are not combined ratios. Those are FM radio stations and their estimates. So I think at a very fundamental level, one of the things to try to just conceptualise the mechanism of insurance is that I call insurance a bucket of money. It’s a bucket of money. And when you make a premium payment as somebody buying an insurance policy. You throw money into the bucket and that bucket accumulates money in it. And then if something untoward happens or something that causes a claim, you put your fist back in that bucket of money and you pull out the money that has been pulled from all the others doing so.

\[00:24:22] Tom Gayner：好的，谢谢。回答这个问题难在你假设我们知道答案，但其中有无法消除的“黑盒”和不确定性——我们也同样面对。有人说他们的综合赔付率是 94.3、97.2 或 91.1，我就说，那听起来像 FM 电台频率，只是估算值。从根本上讲，理解保险机制的方式之一是把保险视为“一桶钱”。投保人支付保费时，把钱丢进这桶里，桶里资金累积；当发生索赔事件时，你把手伸进桶里，从大家投进去的共有资金中取钱。

Now here’s my segue in turn from first to second base. I’m talking about the insurance cycle and pricing. When that bucket of money that represents the insurance industry writ large starts overflowing with money and it just starts spilling over the edges, tends to be that insurance prices and rates go down because there’s enough money in the bucket. And when that bucket is getting a little bit thin and we’re scraping the bottle of the barrel and wondering where the money is, that’s when insurance rates are going up. And that has been the case in the last two or three years. We’ve heard about the wildfires in California, the Hurricanes in Florida, Hawaii, places like that, climate change, inflation and all those kinds of things that have been taking money out of the bucket and that’s why, you know, insurance rates writ large are going up rather than and down and has been the case for a while. Point number one.

接下来从一垒跑向二垒，谈谈保险周期与定价。当代表整个保险业的那桶钱装得满满当当、甚至溢出来时，保险价格通常会下跌，因为桶里钱够多；而当桶里快见底、大家刮着桶底找钱时，保险费率就会上涨。过去两三年情况正是如此。加州山火、佛罗里达和夏威夷的飓风、气候变化、通胀等因素不断从这桶钱里掏走资金，因此整体保险费率持续上升而非下降，并已延续一段时间。这是第一点。

Point number two. You and I share the fact that we are both ex-accountants, CPAs by training, but both of us got out. When somebody was trying and this is before the days of Markel Ventures, which does indeed create a different set of dynamics within our financial statements and somebody was asking me the kind of question you’re asking whether just trying to understand the insurance business, I would invite them to open the balance sheet. The fact the number one and most important financial statement of any kind of financial company, banker and church, is the balance sheet. And I would say here’s a test, point just with your figure point, you need to do no math at all other than the ability to count. Point to me where the biggest number on the balance sheet is. And if you look at the balance sheet, you’ll see that the biggest number typically is the loss reserves number. That is the number we expect to pay out in claims in the future. That’s the biggest number.

第二点。你我都有注册会计师背景，但后来都离开了会计岗位。在 Markel Ventures 之前，有人问我与你类似的问题：如何理解保险业？我会建议他们打开资产负债表。对任何金融机构——银行也好、保险公司也好——最重要的财务报表是资产负债表。我会给他们做个小测试：用手指点出表中最大的数字，不需要做任何运算，只要会数数就行。通常最大的数字是损失准备金，也就是我们预计未来要支付的理赔金额。

And then I would say I promise you one thing is the CPA, and by the way, the CPA society would find me if I just said that without the asterisk, I am a non-practising CPA. I’m not taking the CPA CPE courses and stuff. And you know when Jeremy was doing accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer, you know, we used to talk about accounting with certainly different points of view sometimes at about 30 seconds after he got his new job and left. I heard him start to say, you know, I used to be an accountant, which is what I say. But someone who used to be an accountant, I will tell you that number, that loss reserve number is wrong. It’s wrong. Now the interesting question is it wrong the right way or wrong the wrong way? And wrong the right way means that it’s more than what the claims will end up being. Wrong in the wrong way is that it’s not enough. We have explicitly committed to a standard that we hold ourselves to where we want that number to be more likely to be redundant than deficient.

接着我会说，作为曾经的注册会计师（顺便说明一下，我现在是不执业 CPA，没有继续教育学分），我敢保证那个损失准备金数字一定是错的。问题在于，是“向好”的错，还是“向坏”的错？“向好”的错意味着准备金多于最终理赔；“向坏”的错则是准备金不足。我们明确承诺并长期坚持一个标准：宁可多提也不能少提。

You can look at 36 or 37 years of our reporting financial results as a public company and I know some quarters we might have missed it, but have we ever missed it on an annual basis? 2004 which I can’t remember what the circumstances were that caused that to be the case. Oh, asbestos. Yeah. Recognising the big asbestos loss. But let’s say for the vast majority of the time we’ve actually met that standard. And I think what that shows and really that is the test of both sorts of actuarial and financial technical competence that we sort of know enough of what the number is and add a margin of safety and get there and more importantly than that it is a measure of integrity where we are operating in such a way that we are not going to try to deceive you about what our ultimate loss causes and more importantly, we’re not going to try to deceive ourselves.

回顾我们上市 36、37 年的财报，也许有些季度差强人意，但全年层面有没有失手？2004 年例外——那年我们确认了大额石棉损失。但绝大多数时间我们符合“多提”标准。这既是对精算和财务技术能力的考验：我们大致知道数字，应加安全边际并做到位；更是诚信的体现——既不欺骗投资者，也不自欺。

So we hold ourselves to a pretty tough standard and we’ve got decades of actually meeting or exceeding that standard. So I understand the complexity and the ambiguity of trying to understand insurance but I would encourage you to back out the lens a little bit and do wide open and just look at that kind of sensation of is the number of the combined ratio of less than 100 which means that it’s profitable and in year after year after year after year that number subsequently proved to be enough or not enough. Thanks for the question. Zone two.

因此，我们自设了颇为严苛的标准，并几十年如一日地满足或超越它。我理解学习保险业的复杂与模糊，但建议你把镜头拉远些：先看综合赔付率是否长期低于 100、是否持续盈利，再看多年之后准备金是否充足。谢谢你的提问。下一位。

\[00:30:05] Bo Clayton: Hey, good morning. My name is Bo Clayton. I’m from Durham, NC. About half an hour down the road from Buckner Cranes, thanks for having us today. I have a two-part question. Maybe the first part for Tom and the second part for Andrew. Tom, when you think about capital allocation now across public-private equities, fixed income, and buybacks, how does today’s opportunity set compare to what you’ve seen over the last few years? And then for Andrew, can you give an example of an investment you were able to make in a Ventures business you already owned that competitors who might have a different time horizon probably wouldn’t have made and walk us through the impact that investment had—a win-win-win with shareholders, employees, and customers. Please, thank you.

\[00:30:05] Bo Clayton：大家早上好。我叫 Bo Clayton，来自北卡罗来纳州达勒姆市，离 Buckner Cranes 只有半小时车程，感谢今天的招待。我有两个问题，第一部分问 Tom，第二部分问 Andrew。Tom，当你现在在公共和私募股权、固定收益以及回购之间进行资本分配时，今天的机会组合与过去几年相比如何？Andrew，你能举例说明，在你们已拥有的 Ventures 业务中，你们做出的一项投资，可能由于竞争对手的时间视角不同而不会去做，并向我们说明该投资如何实现了股东、员工和客户三赢吗？谢谢。

\[00:30:57] Tom Gayner: Great. Well, thanks. Thanks for the question. And I’ll take the first part of it. So we have written for many, many years in the annual report that there are four things we can do with capital. I’ll just talk about capital allocation which does presume that you have capital to allocate. It would be a pretty theoretical discussion if you didn’t have some money to allocate. So the good news is we have some money to allocate and so then what do you do with it? So the first thing we look at is we look at our existing businesses. Both in insurance and non-insurance. And do we have people who were already part of the family who have proven their skills and their ability and their capabilities and their integrity? Since it’s not an open question, we know these people. The first order of business is to fund people like that when they have the opportunity to have some organic growth. So that’s first on the list.

\[00:30:57] Tom Gayner：好的，非常感谢你的问题。我先回答第一部分。多年来我们在年报里写过，公司可以用资本做四件事。讨论资本配置的前提是手上有钱，要不就只是理论。好消息是我们确实有资金可用，那么接下来怎么做？第一步看现有业务，无论保险还是非保险。我们是否有已经是“家人”、并且在能力、技术和诚信上都经受过考验的人？答案是肯定的。业务的第一要务就是在他们有机增长的机会出现时为此类人提供资金支持，这排在首位。

The second thing—and these are sort of all ties, it’s like one of those Olympic events, we’re swimming where it’s a hundredth of a second that divides first and fourth place—I don’t know how you rank them between the sets. Investing in new companies and doing a Markel Ventures deal or an add-on within an existing Markel Ventures deal, you know, that’s the second thing we would look for.

第二件事——其实这些都是“并列第一”，就像奥运游泳赛，前四名往往只差百分之一秒，排名难分高下——是投资新公司，亦或是完成 Markel Ventures 的新交易，或在既有 Markel Ventures 平台上做加码收购。

The third, purchasing public securities, be that fixed income or equities, or fourth, repurchasing our own shares. And publicly, you know, I talked about it in the first-quarter conference call last week, I’ve written about it in the last couple of years. It was my sensation—and doing math as aided by my colleagues, I didn’t just do that in darkness—we talked about it, we talked about our methodology for how we think about what a share of Markel is worth. It appeared that a gap was starting to open up between what we thought the share of Markel was worth and what the marketplace was pricing it at. So the rational thing to do, we thought, was to start buying back some stock in a more meaningful increment than we had in the past, and we did. In ’23, that gap seemed to widen further, so we bought more, and in the first quarter of ’24, we thought the gap was wider yet, so we quickened our pace and bought more in the first quarter. So we’ve taken the share count from about 14 million down to 13 million.

第三项是购买公开市场证券——包括固定收益和股票——第四项是回购公司股票。在上周的第一季度电话会上我提到过，过去几年我也写过相关内容。通过同事们的协助和我们的估值方法，我们发现市场给 Markel 的定价与我们心中的内在价值之间出现了差距。理性的做法就是比以往更大力度地回购股份。于是我们在 2023 年加大回购力度，差距进一步扩大；到 2024 年第一季度差距更大，我们又加快了步伐。结果将流通股从约 1400 万股降至 1300 万股。

And what I hope you would have confidence in is that each and every day we look at those four alternatives and we think about what we have in any of those slots, and that’s the way we would think about it. And I’ll turn it over to Andrew to tell us a story or two about some of the things that might have happened with our friends at VSC—add-on deals.

我希望你们有信心，相信我们每天都在审视这四种选择，权衡各自的资本使用机会。下面交给 Andrew，讲讲在 VSC 等业务里做加码收购的一些案例。

\[00:33:34] Andrew Crowley: Sure. Yeah. There are a couple we could point to. Actually, more than a couple, and we talked a lot about VSC last year, so I’ll go in a different direction. But we were talking about this the other night briefly. I had mentioned just some facility expansions going on and things that I think will future-proof several of our businesses that required brief discussion but not 50-page memos to approve. I think our leaders are grateful for that approach when they bring something to us and say something like, “I want to run a place where my grandkids can work. They can be safe. They can have the latest technology and processes to build whatever products they build in that particular area.” That works, you know, and those leaders have done great by the capital they have and I think we expect them to do great by the capital we give them on top of it.

\[00:33:34] Andrew Crowley：好的。有不少案例可谈，我们去年已讨论很多 VSC，所以今天换个方向。前几晚我们简短聊到，一些工厂扩建项目能够为多家子公司“未来保驾护航”，只需简单讨论，不必写 50 页备忘录。我们的经营者提出“我想把工厂打造成让孙辈都能安全工作、拥有最新技术和流程的地方”时，这种思路就行得通。事实证明，他们对现有资本运用出色，我们也相信追加资本会让他们做得更好。

One recent example is our friends at Costa Farms here—you’ve got Joche Smith Jr. and Ariana Cabrera. So Costa Farms is run by third and fourth generations—originally Cuban immigrants. They get mad at me when I say they’re Americans but their family was from Cuba. And in the ornamental-plant world you have, oftentimes, the Cubans and the Dutch, and they don’t particularly get along that well—no offence to any Dutch in the room—but there’s really been a divide between those two heritages in how they grow. Over time there’s been a friendly-foe relationship between Costa and some of the Dutch growers here in the United States.

最近的一个例子来自 Costa Farms，Joche Smith Jr. 和 Ariana Cabrera 都在场。Costa Farms 由第三、第四代家族成员经营，最早是古巴移民。我说他们是美国人时他们会抗议，因为家族来自古巴。在观赏植物领域，古巴人与荷兰人常分成两派，栽培方式上也颇有分歧（无意冒犯现场的荷兰朋友）。长期以来，Costa 与部分美国荷兰裔种植商既竞争又合作。

Well, to start this year—some of you who are keen followers of our businesses may have noted that Costa Farms bought a company called Battlefield. Battlefield is located in Virginia. They’re a meaningful grower of bulbs and perennials, if I’ve got that right, Joche, and they’re Dutch.

今年年初，关注我们业务的朋友可能注意到，Costa Farms 收购了一家名为 Battlefield 的公司，位于弗吉尼亚，主要种植球根和多年生植物（如果我没说错，Joche），而且是荷兰派系。

And by the way, the last couple of years in the ornamental-plant business haven’t been the easiest. For those of you that follow Scotts—publicly you can see that in the pandemic era business was fantastic. Everybody wanted stuff for their outdoor garden and their indoor houseplants. What happened on the back end of that is people grew too much; you had to throw things away. Our partners did as well as anyone could in that environment, but it’s not the easiest time to deploy capital. Costa Farms recently was named the number-one grower on *Greenhouse Grower*’s Top 100 list—that’s done by square footage. Costa Farms has 51 million square feet under roof. The top ten players have 4 million. That shows you how large that business is.

顺便说一句，观赏植物行业过去两年并不轻松。关注 Scotts 的朋友都知道，疫情期间生意好得不得了，每个人都想买户外园艺或室内盆栽；但随后产量过剩，只能销毁。我们的伙伴在那种环境下表现已属上乘，但资本投放并不容易。Costa Farms 最近在《Greenhouse Grower》百强榜位列第一，按温室面积衡量，他们屋顶下的温室面积达到 5100 万平方英尺，而前十名平均只有 400 万，可见规模之大。

Well, after some tough years—already being ranked number one—Dutch dynamics are all out there. Our friends came to us and said, “We think this makes sense. We think this future-proofs Costa.” It gave us an even stronger position, so we were able to lean in. They got that deal done to start the year and Battlefield is doing fantastic. I would encourage everyone to go to Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart and other retailers in your area and buy as many Costa plants as possible because we’re aiming to ship 98 million plants or something this year. So, wonderful business, something we’ll talk about for a long time, and I think that’s an opportunity to deploy capital that’s going to work well for you all as our shareholders.

在经历艰难岁月、仍稳居第一之际，我们的伙伴认为收购 Battlefield 能让 Costa 更具“未来弹性”，并向我们提出该计划。我们果断支持，交易年初完成，如今 Battlefield 运营良好。我鼓励大家去 Lowe’s、Home Depot、Walmart 等零售商购买尽可能多的 Costa 植物，今年我们计划出货约 9800 万株。这是了不起的业务，我们会长期谈论它，我也认为这笔资本投放会为各位股东带来良好回报。

\[00:36:33] Tom Gayner: Come on people do your part. Get the Costa plan. Zone one.

\[00:36:33] Tom Gayner：来吧，各位，出一份力。去买 Costa 的植物。一区。

\[00:36:38] Joey Opekan: Hello, my name is Joey Opekan. I’m from Richmond, VA and I’ve been a shareholder since 2019. Thank you for holding this event and I really look forward to seeing you guys at the reunion in a few weeks. My question also has to do somewhat with capital allocation. Tom, you’ve been soul CEO now for a little bit more than a year now and I’m curious, what has changed and has any capital allocation maybe principles or ideas shifted over that time? Thank you.

\[00:36:38] Joey Opekan：大家好，我叫 Joey Opekan，来自弗吉尼亚州里士满，自 2019 年起成为股东。感谢你们举办此次活动，我很期待几周后在聚会上再见到大家。我的问题也涉及资本配置。Tom，你独任 CEO 已有一年多，我想知道发生了哪些改变？在这段时间里，资本配置的原则或理念有没有发生变化？谢谢。

\[00:37:19] Tom Gayner: Thank you. There are three directors here and I can remember writing a memo to them recently talking about some of the changes that have happened. And I said I think it’s good to have one throat to choke. So instead of having two throats, it’s one throat. So the accountability is there in that sense. It was primarily my responsibility for capital allocation while I was co-CEO. But obviously, Richie supervised the insurance business and would have had the primary vote on things that were related to insurance. So it’s now my primary responsibility to make those decisions for the organisation as a whole but the principles by which those are made hasn’t changed a bit and they’re not going to change either. Thank you. Zone two.

\[00:37:19] Tom Gayner：谢谢。现场有三位董事，我记得最近给他们写过一份备忘录，讨论一些变化。我说过，“最好只要一只喉咙可以掐”，与其有两只喉咙，不如只剩一只，这样问责更明确。我担任联席 CEO 时，资本配置主要由我负责。当然，Richie 监管保险业务，对保险相关事项拥有主要投票权。现在，作为唯一 CEO，我对整个组织的决策负首要责任，但决策所依据的原则一点都没变，也不会改变。谢谢。二区。

\[00:38:07] Speaker 4: Thank you for hosting and for having us and thank you for showing up with such a deep bench this weekend. Been lucky enough to visit with members of the three engines. Been able to speak with Pete, Lisa, and Amy from Ventures, met Richie from Insurance, and was able to meet the team from Costa Farms and it’s been great. It’s clearly a congenial talented group. As I think about the job of knitting together a group three engines and making it in one firm or making people really work well together, can’t help but go in my mind to the thought that as capital allocators, there’s competition for the capital and how do you think about the importance of knitting the group together? Is it worth the time and the energy, and if so, how are you doing it and why?

\[00:38:07] 发言者 4：感谢你们的接待和安排，也感谢本周末如此强大的团队阵容。我有幸与“三大引擎”的成员交流——与 Ventures 的 Pete、Lisa、Amy 交谈，见到保险板块的 Richie，也见到了 Costa Farms 团队——非常棒，显然是一支和谐且才华横溢的团队。当我思考如何把三大引擎整合成一家公司的工作、让大家真正高效协同时，不禁想到：作为资本分配者，大家都在竞争资本。你如何看待把团队“编织”在一起的重要性？这值得投入时间和精力吗？如果值得，你们是如何做的，又为什么这样做？

\[00:38:56] Tom Gayner: Well, the question of capital allocation does end up on my desk. So yes, you’re right and the good news about that statement, there is competition for capital. There’s sure as hell it is and there’s a lot of type A people running these businesses and they want to win. And they want to be the ones, they want to be the horse that won the Kentucky Derby yesterday. And that’s good. That is a good dynamic. But for the Markel Group, making that decision of who gets the money or who doesn’t sometimes the fact of not getting what you want is helpful. It’s a discipline. There was one time many, many years ago, I had moved to a new town and I was going around with Susan and we were, you know, trying to find a new church to go to and there was a church we went to and there was a sermon that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And what the guy said was he talked about post-world, I mean, during World War 2 in the US, when there was rationing of so many things, including sugar and some guy was at a diner and he had ordered a meal and ordered a cup of coffee. At one point, he asked if he could have some more sugar. And the waitress said stir what you’ve got. So that line burned in for a long time. It was a 40-year-old story. But that story has been told around the halls of Markel. From time to time we do have people who are very anxious to keep going. But there are times when it’s my job to say stir what you’ve got and we do. Generally speaking, it’s my observation that those people go back and refine the plan, rejigger things, and sort of demonstrate that they indeed should be allocated more sugar, and they do. And that’s a robust process, and everybody is pretty wide-eyed about how that all works in such a way that I think that makes the organisation knitted together and stronger like he speaks of. Someone?

\[00:38:56] Tom Gayner：资本配置的问题最终落到我桌上，所以你说得对——资本的确存在竞争，绝对激烈。许多业务由雄心勃勃的 A 型人格在管理，他们想赢，他们想成为昨天肯塔基德比赛马的冠军。这很好，是一种积极的动力。但在 Markel 集团，决定谁拿到资金、谁拿不到时，“没得到想要的东西”本身有时就是一种有益的纪律。很多年前，我搬到新城市，和 Susan 一起找教会。有次牧师的布道让我终身难忘：二战期间美国实行配给制，糖也配给。一位顾客在餐馆点餐和咖啡，后来想再要糖，服务员回答：“先把你杯子里的搅一搅。” 这句话我一直记得，也在 Markel 流传。有时有人急于继续扩张，但我必须说：“先把你已有的搅一搅。” 我们确实这么做。通常我的观察是，那些人会回去完善计划、重新调整，证明自己确实值得分到更多“糖”，而他们也做到了。这是一个健全的流程，人人都清楚其运作方式，我认为正如他所说，这让组织的编织更紧密、更强大。有人要发言吗？

\[00:41:03] Mariya Messerli: Good morning. I’m Mariya Messerli. I’m a private investor coming from Switzerland. Special thanks for putting my picture on the website of this registration of the brunch. I got slightly more famous among my fellow value investors, so I guess it’s win-win lived life. So today I have a question for you and here it is. Yesterday, we heard Ajit Jain saying, “Climate change is much like inflation. If done right, it can be a friend of a risk bearer.” My question is, if and when will social inflation and economic inflation turn to be Markel’s friends, what is the role of new technology to get there? Any example of application cases would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

\[00:41:03] Mariya Messerli：早上好！我是 Mariya Messerli，一名来自瑞士的私人投资者。非常感谢你们把我的照片放在早午餐报名网页上，在价值投资圈里我因此小小出名了一把，可谓双赢人生。今天我有个问题想请教。昨天我们听到 Ajit Jain 说：“气候变化有点像通胀，如果处理得当，它可以成为风险承担者的朋友。”我的问题是：什么时候、以及在什么条件下，社会通胀和经济通胀会成为 Markel 的朋友？要做到这点，新技术将扮演怎样的角色？如果能举一些应用案例，将不胜感激。谢谢！

\[00:41:54] Tom Gayner: Sure. I’ll take the first stab at this and then ask Jeremy to speak to it as well. So what Ajit was speaking of in particular, I think were the mechanics of how insurance policies work. So every single day that goes by, roughly speaking 1/365th of all the risks we have get repriced because insurance policies are sold largely one year at a time. So you take on a certain amount of risk to the policy limit you’re exposed to that risk for a year and the effects of climate change that have happened so far have happened day by day, by day, by day, by day, such that day by day, by day, by day we also respond in tandem with the repricing of that risk. And then in the marketplace, people see the renewal prices for their insurance quotes that factor into their decision as do we still want to live here or not? Should I go somewhere else? Do I need to improve the fire safety within my structure compared to what it is right now?

\[00:41:54] Tom Gayner：好的，我先回答，然后请 Jeremy 补充。我认为 Ajit 谈的是保险保单的运作机制。每天都会有大约 1/365 的在保风险被重新定价，因为保险多数是一年期的：你承担某个保额范围内的一年风险。气候变化带来的影响也是日复一日累积的，同样我们也会同步、日复一日地重新定价这些风险。市场上，人们看到续保报价后，会思考诸如“我们还要住在这里吗？要搬去别处吗？是否该提升建筑的防火安全？”之类的问题。

There are measures and countermeasures that exist all the time and the insurance mechanism sends a signal to the marketplace that, hey, more bad things can happen than used to. And if that’s true, we need to charge more for it and we need to maintain profitability for the insurance company. So that if you have a claim, we are financially solvent to pay that claim and it helps inform your decisions of how much you can start to do things that would improve climate outcomes. So he was speaking to the technical matters and that would apply to inflation and social inflexion. Every single thing that goes into making up loss, we try to stay as quick on understanding that and use that as a feedback loop to change and alter our pricing day by day, by day, by day. And if we get it wrong, typically within the context of a year, our bell gets rung and we know that we got it wrong, such that when we reprice that policy next year, we have the opportunity to charge a different price for it. Jeremy, do you have anything to add?

风险与对策始终并存，保险机制会向市场发出信号：现在坏事发生的概率比过去高。如果真如此，我们就必须提高费率，并保持保险公司的盈利能力，这样当你出险时我们才能有充足资金赔付；同时也帮助你决定该采取多少措施来改善气候结果。他谈的是技术层面，这同样适用于经济和社会通胀。所有造成损失的因素，我们都尽可能快速理解，并把它当作反馈循环，天天调整定价。如果判断失误，通常一年内就会被“敲钟”提醒，到了下一次续保便有机会重新定价。Jeremy，你有什么补充吗？

\[00:44:05] Jeremy Noble: Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Maybe a few things. So building off what Tom just said. So at the end of the day from a speciality insurance standpoint, you know our job is to absorb other’s volatility and uncertainty. So to a certain degree, I think that might have been what Ajit was commenting on as well. If there wasn’t a volatility, there was no uncertainty. You start to minimalize the value proposition. I think of insurance. So we have to do that thoughtfully and efficiently and well. And if we can do that and when we do that well, we earn appropriate returns on capital and that’s the name of the game. And that builds off some of what Tom was sharing, how do you go about managing that effectively? If we think about taking, for example, you know climate change as an aspect and when we think about a business that we would have within our insurance engine with Nephila, their value proposition longer term is the fact that they sit, I think, at the intersection of we’re in a world with elevating level of volatility and risk and uncertainty. There’s a value to associate with that risk, and there is an uncorrelated aspect of natural catastrophe risk relative to a lot of other things that move markets.

\[00:44:05] Jeremy Noble：大家早上好。我补充几点。首先，正如 Tom 所说，从专业保险角度看，我们的职责是吸收他人的波动和不确定性。某种程度上，我认为这也是 Ajit 的意思。如果没有波动，就没有不确定性，保险的价值主张也会被削弱。所以我们必须审慎、高效地做好这件事；做得好，资本回报就合适，这就是游戏规则。这与 Tom 分享的管理方法一脉相承。以气候变化为例，我们保险引擎中的 Nephila 业务长期价值在于：当世界波动、风险和不确定性上升时，他们处于“交汇点”，能够为这种风险定价；而自然灾害风险与许多驱动市场的其他因素不相关，这是宝贵的。

So if you think there is that uncorrelated aspect and you believe that the world is a bit sort of more risky and you are concerned about sort of, let’s say, climate risk, well then investing in an uncorrelated way at that intersection with somebody that’s driving our thought leadership around the science of risk. So back to the tools, technology, data insights that’s I think, an example of that. The same would be true for wider economic inflation or social inflation in those products. So Tom’s point. We can reprice the product each year, but it’s also our job to manage that thoughtfully over the long term and be leaders. So complement that with data insights and that’s certainly what we’re investing in with the insurance platform as well. Thank you.

因此，如果你看重这种非相关性，并认为全球风险上升、尤其关注气候风险，那么在这一交汇点进行非相关投资、与推动我们风险科学理念的团队合作就很有意义。回到工具、技术和数据洞察，这正是案例。同理，面对更广泛的经济或社会通胀，这些产品也是如此。正如 Tom 所言，我们可以每年重新定价产品，但同时也要在长期内审慎管理并发挥引领作用，再辅以数据洞察——这正是我们在保险平台持续投资的方向。谢谢。

\[00:46:01] Tom Gayner: Zone 2.

\[00:46:01] Tom Gayner：二区。

\[00:46:04] Stephen Chen: Hi Tom and Jeremy. I’m Stephen Chen, a shareholder from Singapore. First of all, thank you for hosting this event. I have a question related to your Asia insurance expansion. You have a scale and successful speciality operation in the US however, in other regions such as Asia, your insurance operation is relatively small. And may just focus on one or two lines. I would like to get your thoughts on how you would balance growth and profitability for the Asia expansion. Specifically what you try to build scale in expanding into additional lines of business knowingly that it could have a negative impact on the combined ratio in the short-term. Lastly, Tom, a big welcome in advance to your upcoming trip to Singapore. Charlie Munger says Singapore has one of the best government systems in the world and really looks forward to meeting you there. Thank you.

\[00:46:04] Stephen Chen：嗨，Tom 和 Jeremy。我是 Stephen Chen，来自新加坡的股东。首先感谢你们举办这次活动。我想请教关于你们在亚洲扩展保险业务的问题。你们在美国拥有规模化且成功的专业险运营，但在亚洲等其他地区，保险业务相对较小，可能只聚焦一两条产品线。请问在亚洲扩张时，你们如何平衡增长与盈利？尤其是在明知短期可能拉高综合赔付率的情况下，是否会为了规模而扩展更多业务线？最后，Tom，提前欢迎你即将到访新加坡。Charlie Munger 说新加坡拥有世界上最好的政府体系之一，期待在那里见到你。谢谢。

\[00:46:58] Tom Gayner: Well, thank you so much. I look forward to being there. It will be my first trip and I am indeed excited about it. I’m going to turn it over to Jeremy for his thoughts in just a second. But I can tell you that he’s just been in Asia and logged some of those miles and been to a lot of places. But before he responds to the specifics, let me share with you that while everything you just said is true, we were in Asia and Singapore, a relatively small operation right now and limited lines of business and individual losses can have outsize effects on the combined ratio of that operation. I’ll remind you that was also true of Markel when it operated in Richmond, VA or even before that when it operated in Norfolk, VA, as a small local regional company. So what did we do? Well, we expanded geographically, we expanded our product lines and we bought reinsurance all along the way. So there is a capital opportunity to backstop ourselves as we begin to do things and we’re on the frontline and we’re learning. Typically we do so with reinsurance partners who enable us to absorb some of the volatility and offer larger limits on policies than we could on our own but just as was the case if expanding from Virginia, as we learned, as we added capital, we expanded the size and scale of what we were doing in every dimension, terms of product lines, regional and policy limits. They were able to offer without using quite so much reinsurance. So expect that crawl, walk, run approach in Asia as was the case with Markel Ventures, as was the case with Markel Insurance from the very beginning. This is a movie that was played before.

\[00:46:58] Tom Gayner：非常感谢。我期待前往新加坡，那将是我的首次造访，我确实很兴奋。我马上请 Jeremy 发表看法。不过先说一点：你刚才所述确实属实——我们在亚洲、在新加坡的业务目前规模较小、产品线有限，单笔损失都会对该地区的综合赔付率产生较大影响。我想提醒，各位别忘了，Markel 早年在弗吉尼亚州里士满，甚至更早在诺福克运营时，也只是小型的地方性公司。那时我们怎么做？我们扩大地理覆盖，增加产品线，并一路购买再保险，为自己的前线探索提供资本后盾。通常我们与再保险伙伴合作，以吸收波动并提供高于自有资本能力的保额。就像当年从弗吉尼亚向外扩张一样，随着经验和资本的累积，我们在产品线、地域和保额各维度逐步做大，而对再保的依赖相对减少。所以请预期我们在亚洲也会采取“爬—走—跑”的节奏，正如 Markel Ventures 及 Markel Insurance 最初的发展路径一样，这部电影我们已经放映过。

\[00:48:42] Jeremy Noble: Yeah. Thanks, Tom, and thanks for the question too. In that example, you know crawl, walk, run. I don’t know exactly where we are but we’ll say we’re in the walking and thinking about maybe what it looks like to run. So we’ve been in Asia for about 15 years but only in the last few years, I think have we had increased confidence in and reached enough scale in our platform across the wider Asia Pacific region to feel quite confident. So under Christian Stubb’s leadership, we opened offices. Actually, at the end of last year in the Australian insurance marketplace, we’re in India, we’re in Singapore, and that’s where we hub our operations from a bit of presence in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Our focus, as with everything in our insurance platform, is on speciality products and expertise. And actually to the question part of what we’ve been doing is bringing in exceptional talent and we’re now able to have the size and scale that we can bring really market-leading talent into our organisation, benefited and supported by the wider Markel brand in our global operations.

\[00:48:42] Jeremy Noble：谢谢 Tom，也感谢这位提问者。就“爬—走—跑”的比喻而言，我不确定我们正处于哪一步，但大概已经在“走”，并开始思考“跑”会是什么样子。我们在亚洲已深耕约 15 年，但只有最近几年，我们的平台规模和信心才在更广泛的亚太地区达到较高水平。在 Christian Stubb 的领导下，我们开设了新办公室——去年年底进入澳大利亚保险市场，另外我们在印度、新加坡设有枢纽，并在马来西亚、香港和中国大陆有一定布局。与整个保险平台一致，我们聚焦于专业险及其专业能力。围绕你的问题，我们做的事情之一是引进出色人才；凭借更大的规模和 Markel 全球品牌支持，我们现已能够吸引真正行业领先的人才加入。

We have the product and thought leadership around speciality lines that we partner with through our London market operations and we’re expanding our product set. So we have professional lines offerings, trade credit, cyber, marine and energy, political violence and terrorism. So any number of sort of product lines. Now in the wider Asia Pacific market, it’s still specially products are still sort of more nascent but when we look at population trends, when we look at GDP growth trends and projections and when we think about the need for specialist products, being long-standing on the ground, demonstrating a firm commitment to the region that’s going to help us grow. So we’re, you know, a hundred million platform out there and that can grow and our intention would be to grow that meaningfully over the course of the next several years but thoughtfully, it earns a profit now, so the investment that’s required shouldn’t change that significantly.

我们依托伦敦市场的运营，在专业险产品与理念上具备领先优势，并正扩充产品组合——包括责任险、贸易信用险、网络险、船舶与能源险，以及政治暴力和恐怖主义险等多条产品线。在更广阔的亚太地区，专业险仍处于相对早期阶段；但从人口趋势、GDP 增长预测以及对专业险需求来看，长期扎根并展示对该地区的坚定承诺将助力我们的增长。目前我们在当地的保费规模约为 1 亿美元，并有望在接下来几年显著提升。重要的是，它现在就已盈利，因此所需投资不会显著改变这一状况。

\[00:50:44] Tom Gayner: And for additional context, that a hundred million is within the context of 8 billion-ish of total insurance premiums for the–

\[00:50:44] Tom Gayner：再补充一下背景：那 1 亿美元，是在我们大约 80 亿美元总保费规模的大盘子里——

\[00:50:52] Jeremy Noble: 10 billion.

\[00:50:52] Jeremy Noble：准确说是 100 亿。

\[00:50:54] Tom Gayner: Zone 1.

\[00:50:54] Tom Gayner：第一提问区。

\[00:50:56] Ken: Hello, Tom. This is Ken from Singapore. I’ve been an investor for over 10 years and this is my second time in Nebraska, Omaha. My question is in regard to safe investing. So when you think about safe investing when you buy companies that have a lot of debt, how do we know if the debt is good debt or bad debt? For example, if you look at Starbucks, McDonald’s and Apple, they have a lot of debt, but they’re great companies. That’s my first question. My second question is, would you ever buy Chinese, China companies? Thank you.

\[00:50:56] Ken：你好，Tom。我叫 Ken，来自新加坡，投资 Markel 已逾十年，这是我第二次来到奥马哈。我的问题与“安全投资”有关。当我们购买负债很高的公司时，如何判断这些债务是“好债务”还是“坏债务”？例如星巴克、麦当劳和苹果，它们债务很多，但依然是伟大的公司。这是第一个问题。第二个问题是，你们会投资中国公司吗？谢谢。

\[00:51:33] Tom Gayner: Certainly. Thank you for the question. I think the debt question, in particular, is fascinating and if you read our annual report, which I encourage you to do, I talked about our investing process and it’s consistent year after year after year and the things we look for, you know we talked, I think the very first screen and philtre and thought process that we have is good companies that earn good returns on capital without using too much debt. It’s the first sentence in there. Now that phrase, too much debt, does it give you a quantified number? What is too much? Is it 10%? Is it 80%? Is it three times EBITDA? Whatever. Each kind of business has a reasonably appropriate amount of debt that is comfortable and that also changes with interest rates.

\[00:51:33] Tom Gayner：当然，感谢提问。我认为债务问题特别有意思。阅读我们的年报——我鼓励大家去读——可以看到我们的投资流程多年如一。第一条筛选标准就是：寻找能够在不依赖过度债务的情况下赚取良好资本回报的优质公司。这里的“过度债务”并没有一个固定数字：到底是 10%、80%，还是 EBITDA 的三倍？不同业务有各自适当的债务水平，而且还会随利率变化。

So for instance, I’ll tell you this story. This is probably a 15 or 20-year-old story. I came into work one day and I read the *Wall Street Journal* as I do every day, among other papers and place to start the day, and there was a little announcement news article about the Walt Disney Company which had just done an issuance of a 100-year debt at 5 and 5/8 or something like that. I looked at that and I said that is nuts. So I said and then I even got a little curious about it. So I dug into it and I said to myself, I’ll bet they’re refinancing a previous 100-year issue that had a five-year call at 5 and 7/8th and had to re-click that ratchet wrench quarter of a point down. That’s exactly what they what they were doing.

举个例子——大约二十年前的一件事。有一天我照例翻阅《华尔街日报》，看到沃尔特迪士尼公司发行了一笔 100 年期、票息 5又5/8 的债券。我心想这太疯狂了；进一步查资料，果然他们是在再融资一笔此前利率 5又7/8、五年可赎的百年期债券，等于把扳手往下又拧了四分之一个点，这正是他们在做的。

So I tried it into the office of our chief financial officer, who was neither Jeremy nor Brian at the time or was before them. And I said to him, I said we got to see if we can do something like this. I mean, we have to do this and a 100-year debt with a year call that’s not really debt it’s equity with the fixed price to it. We ought to be able to do better than that.

于是我跑去找当时的首席财务官（当时还不是 Jeremy 或 Brian），说：我们也得搞一个这样的百年期债券，带早期赎回权，这几乎算是带定价的股权了，我们肯定能做得更好。

So I floated the idea that we should do that and he didn’t really jump at the idea and I said, no, no, no, we really need to do that. So reluctantly, I twisted his arm and he called our bankers. … The banker said, look, Markel, people have never heard of it. Disney is a consumer name people know and love Disney so they can do that, and so I grunted and went away.

我提出后，他并不热心。我坚持要做，硬把他“拧”去给银行打电话……银行回复：Markel 没什么知名度；迪士尼是家喻户晓的消费品牌，才能发行这种债。于是我只好悻悻离开。

And then maybe a week later, just by accident, a company called Eskimo Pie and everybody knows the Eskimo pie desserts wrapped in aluminium foil? So they spun it out and it became this independently publicly traded company called Eskimo Pie. And the market cap of the whole thing was about \$25 million. So I propose, hey, let’s buy Eskimo Pie. Change our name to Eskimo Pie and then call up people and say, hey, you want some Eskimo pie? Who can say no to that? But again, that’s a flight of a fancy exercise, but it illustrates the point that there’s not a point number point estimate. 

大约一周后，巧合地出现了 Eskimo Pie 这家公司——大家都知道用锡纸包的冰糕 Eskimo Pie ……后来被剥离成一家独立上市公司，市值只有约 2500 万美元。我开玩笑说：那我们干脆收购 Eskimo Pie，把公司改名叫 Eskimo Pie，再给投资者打电话：“想要 Eskimo Pie 吗？”谁能拒绝！这当然只是异想天开，但说明一点：债务适度并无绝对数字可依。……

It is a qualitative slash quantitative amount that is appropriate for the business that’s involved and that’s one of the reasons we go to work every day is because you can’t write that number down at one point in time or for one business and think it applies at all points in time and for all businesses. …

债务水平既要定量也要定性，取决于具体业务。你无法写下一个数字就认为所有公司、所有时期都适用，这也是我们每天上班要做判断的原因。……

So we’re very thoughtful about what the appropriate amount of debt is. We will err on the side of having less than I think most people would think is comfortable. We will more lightly lever businesses than most people would. So that’s the comment on that.

因此，我们对“适当的负债”非常谨慎，宁可负债少于多数人觉得“舒服”的水平，也不会过度加杠杆。关于债务，就是这些。

In China, we invest and Andrew’s on brand there with his Coke can. We invest in companies that do business in China. …

至于中国市场，正如 Andrew 举着可口可乐罐所示，我们会投资在华经营的公司。……

So he did not rule it out. And I won’t rule it out either. My level of expertise, if anything, is less than Buffett’s. I am younger than Buffett. So I got some more time and perhaps, you know, some of the energy levels that he alluded to and talked about but it will require a different level of expertise than what we have.

巴菲特并未排除投资中国的可能，我也不会排除。我的专业水平不及巴菲特，但我更年轻，还有时间和精力去学习。不过，要做到这一点需要我们获得不同层面的专业知识。

And I think to the point that Jeremy made about you know we have a \$100 million book of insurance business within Asia now that will lead to other things in the same way that in the US that we started it as an insurance organisation taking insurance risk and it was really not until the 3rd generation of the Markel family when Steve was at the financial controls of the business that pivoted and morphed into trying to build an investment arm on top of that.

正如 Jeremy 提到的，我们在亚洲已有 1 亿美元规模的保险业务。这与当年 Markel 在美国的发展路径类似：先从承保风险的保险业务做起，直到 Markel 家族第三代、Steve 掌财务大权时，才逐步转向在此基础上组建投资部门。

So the first way in which we will gain expertise is operating in those markets on the ground with insurance risks. And I think it would be logical to assume we will meet people we will form relationships, and we will gain expertise that probably will have spillover effects into the investment world over time. Zone 2.

因此，我们获取专业知识的第一步是扎根当地、通过承保风险来运营业务。可以合理预期，我们将在这一过程中结识伙伴、建立关系，并积累经验，最终对投资领域产生溢出效应。第二提问区。

\[00:57:46] Jackson: Hi, good morning, everyone. I’m Jackson from Singapore. It’s the first time I’m attending the Markel Brunch and I brought along a few families and friends and I’m hoping to convert them into Markel shareholders, but if you will, let’s see how this goes. OK. I have a two-part question.

\[00:57:46] Jackson：大家早上好。我叫 Jackson，来自新加坡。这是我第一次参加 Markel 早午餐，我带了几位家人和朋友，希望能把他们变成 Markel 股东，让我们拭目以待。好的，我有两个问题。

\[00:58:02] Tom Gayner: We thank you for doing your part. We’ll try to do our part too. Thank you.

\[00:58:02] Tom Gayner：感谢你做出努力，我们也会尽我们所能。谢谢。

\[00:58:05] Jackson: Thank you. So I have a two-part question. Number one, how does Markel manage the insurance business in terms of repricing underwriting discipline and premium rate adjustment during an unfavourable premium pricing environment? And number two, how does Markel stay ahead of emerging risks like geopolitical, cyber, and climate risk and are there any active initiatives and strategies that you guys are taking to pre-empt the impact of this risk?

\[00:58:05] Jackson：谢谢。我有两个问题。第一，在不利的保费定价环境中，Markel 如何通过重新定价、保持承保纪律以及调整费率来管理保险业务？第二，面对地缘政治、网络及气候等新兴风险，Markel 如何保持领先地位？你们是否已采取任何主动举措和策略来预先减轻这些风险的影响？

\[00:58:31] Tom Gayner: Great. Well, let me let me attempt to answer some of those questions. First is how do we operate the insurance business in an era where you know its premium rates are declining, which will typically referred to as a soft market. Well, I’ve been to Markel 34 years now and I sometimes joke that while I’ve been there 34 years, it seems like we’ve been in a soft market about 37 out of those 34 years. Soft markets tend to be the pervasive conditions of things and it’s only brief periods that we would say, you know, we just need to sit there and answer the phone because things are coming in over the transom as opposed to going out and hustling for business. I’m exaggerating to make a point but that notion of hard and soft markets is something we’ve operated with forever.

\[00:58:31] Tom Gayner：好的，让我尝试回答这些问题。首先，在保费下降、通常称为“软市场”的时期，我们如何经营保险业务？我在 Markel 已工作 34 年了，我常开玩笑说，在这 34 年里，我们似乎有 37 年处于软市场。软市场往往是常态，只有极短时间我们会说“只需坐等电话”，业务就会自动上门，而无需外出争取。我略显夸张，但“硬市场”与“软市场”的概念一直贯穿我们的运营。

In our annual report as an example, I think one of the things that Markel does very differently than other people and this is very much on purpose, we give you 21 years of financial data at the bottom of the first page of the shareholders’ letter. So it tries to reemphasize the long-term nature of the way we do things. If you sort of dredged up some of the old Markel annual reports and you got into the period of the, I guess, the 1990s, early 2000, there would be decades, decades, literally decades where the top line didn’t really grow that much. But the equity value of the company went up 3X, 4X over those decades. Well, how did you pull that off? Well, we restrained ourselves and disciplined to only write insurance where we thought it could be profitable. And if you can’t write as much of it, don’t try to rate more insurance and take on underwriting losses. That’s just foolish and we’re disciplined enough that we always get it perfectly, but that is the way the dials are set and the way we try to do things.

在我们的年报中，有一点是 Markel 与众不同且刻意为之的——在股东信首页底部，我们列出了 21 年的财务数据，以此强调我们行事的长期性。如果你翻阅早期 Markel 年报（如 1990 年代、2000 年代初），会发现有几十年，公司收入几乎没有增长，但股权价值却翻了三、四倍。秘诀何在？我们克制且严格纪律，只承保我们认为会盈利的业务；如果写不了那么多保单，就不要为了追求规模而承担承保亏损——那是愚蠢的。我们虽非十全十美，但操作的“刻度盘”始终如此设定。

So we’re comfortable not having top-line growth and you as our partners as our shareholders, don’t worry about that because the good news is we’re committed to profitability, and we can do investments, we can do more ventures, acquisitions, we can repurchase our own shares such that in as you go through periods like that even though the top-line growth may be diminished, the bottom line value creation per share seems to continue to persist. And you don’t just have to take my word for it. Look at the 10, 20, 30 years’ worth of data and you will see periods of rapid growth and not so much growth at all and measured over five and 10-year periods and that’s why we report that way as opposed to much quarter by quarter, you’ll see that the I think the shareholders of this organisation have done very well over time. And we will continue to operate the business in the same way. Jeremy, do you want to add anything to that?

因此，我们对缺乏收入增长保持坦然。身为我们的合作伙伴和股东，您不必担心，因为好消息是我们致力于盈利：我们可以投资、做更多风险投资、进行收购，也可以回购自家股票。即便在收入增长放缓的时期，每股底线价值创造仍持续存在。您不必只听我说，看 10 年、20 年、30 年的数据，就会看到快速增长与放缓并存——这也是我们按 5 年、10 年跨度报告而非逐季报告的原因。我认为，本公司的股东长期表现优异，我们也会继续以相同方式运营。Jeremy，你要补充吗？

\[01:01:23] Jeremy Noble: Yeah, I think it’s a great question then maybe a few things that I would talk about. So one, I want to tie that question back from an insurance lens to the wider architecture of the Markel Group. So there are these long-standing principles that you’ll hear us talk about all the time like being conservative, the margin of safety, more likely redundant than deficient, and taking a long-term time horizon. Additionally, with the three-engine architecture, the reality is we don’t have to feel compelled to put in capital or work if it’s not going to earn an appropriate return within the insurance. I can and I gladly will give the money back to Tom and the colleagues across the Markel Group. So it’s just another way that we can act with discipline. So to that point, we talk about the fact that we only want to be writing business that we think is going to meet our appropriate return on capital and we want to act with discipline. To Tom’s point, you’ll see what that looks like over time. We’re talking about, right now, current examples where we face changes, external and internal circumstances that have caused us to revisit portfolio health, portfolio management take actions and remix, right?

\[01:01:23] Jeremy Noble：是的，这是个好问题，我想谈几点。首先，我想把这个问题从保险视角联系到 Markel 集团更广阔的架构。我们始终坚持的长期原则包括：保持保守、安全边际、宁可冗余也不不足，以及采用长期视角。此外，凭借“三引擎”架构，如果在保险领域无法获得适当回报，我们就无需被迫投入资本或资源。我可以，也乐意把资金退还给 Tom 及 Markel 集团的同事们——这也是我们保持纪律的另一种方式。所以，我们只承保能达到适当资本回报的业务，并保持纪律。正如 Tom 所说，随着时间推移，你将看到实际效果。当前我们面临外部和内部环境变化，促使我们重新审视投资组合健康状况、进行管理、采取行动并重新配置，对吧？

And we’re talking about right now the insurance. The top line volume is a little is growing at a more modest rate, more temper grade because we’re doing just that. We’re taking those actions. I think that the other thing that helps us is, again, the architecture on the insurance side is diversification. So we have over a hundred major product lines, but we think about our product diversification. We think about customer segmentation. We think about geography. We gave an example earlier of Asia. We can think about that in the UK or we can think about that in continental Europe. At any point in time, the trends are sort of different sometimes and depending on where in the world we’re talking about, how we distribute the product. So there are a lot of different ways we can segment our portfolios that also allow us to sort of act with discipline in any place that we’re concerned about. The last point I’ll make is the point around how you think about sort of risk management and developing and expanding trends. And I’ll give a good example where I think of purpose and profitability match if we think about within our insurance operations.

目前在保险业务方面，收入规模正以更温和的速度增长，这是因为我们正采取上述措施。我认为另一个优势是保险端的多元化架构：我们拥有 100 多个主要产品线，并从产品多元化、客户细分、地理分布等角度进行考量。我们之前举了亚洲的例子，同样可以考虑英国或欧洲大陆。在任何时间点，不同地区的趋势会有所差异，也取决于我们的产品分销方式。因此，我们可以通过多种方式细分投资组合，从而在我们关注的任何领域保持纪律。我想提出的最后一点是关于风险管理以及新兴和扩张趋势——当我们在保险运营中将使命与盈利相结合时，这里有一个很好的例子。

So let’s think about the events around the war in Ukraine and the grain corridor. Let’s think about right now the Red Sea. I mean cargo and shipping are incredibly vital to the global economy. And you know, I’m proud of the fact that I think Markel is a leader in marine war haul cargo. Has been able to step up along with others in the insurance industry to provide solutions, to support ongoing shipments to keep the global economy going, and that addresses, you know, starvation and hunger and those sorts of things as well. But in order to do so, we have incredibly increased sort of the technology, the risk management, the tools, the work that we do, our precision and advancement in the technology and the science of underwriting risk in that space has never rapidly evolved as much as it has in the last couple of years. So we’re able to earn good returns on capital appropriate returns while demonstrating, really I think, the noble purpose within society that insurance serves. So that is at the core and the heart of what we’re trying to do within our speciality insurance operations.

以乌克兰战争及粮食走廊的事件为例，再看看如今的红海航运。货运与航运对全球经济至关重要。我为 Markel 在海运战险货运保险领域的领先地位感到自豪。我们与保险业其他公司一道，提供解决方案，支持持续运输，以维持全球经济运转，并解决饥荒等问题。但要做到这一点，我们在技术、风险管理、工具和工作方法上大幅提升，过去几年里我们在该领域的承保技术和科学精准度取得了前所未有的快速进步。因此，我们既能获得良好且适当的资本回报，又能彰显保险在社会中的崇高使命——这正是我们专业保险业务的核心与宗旨。

\[01:04:49] Tom Gayner: Zone 1.

\[01:04:49] Tom Gayner：分区 1。

\[01:04:51] Tom: Hi Tom, I’m from Dallas. This is my first time for Berkshire and Markel and I initially got to know about Markel from the book called Richer, Wiser, Happier and I got through the shareholder letters. They are really good and honest. I appreciate that. And also one thing I want to mention is I like the approach of a customer first where they can bring more business to Markel again and again. So here are my questions like two questions. One is excess and surplus market is expected to grow higher single digits and the PNC market is in the lower 5 like +5. So Markel has a prior experience across the market in, you know, excess and surplus. So are they going to take any advantage of the new catastrophes given that? And also the other one is, with respect to the combined ratio, we have seen some kind of like the combined ratio went a bit higher, so is it like we have to look at it as a short-term trend or is the Markel team looking at how this is going to evolve? So I want a comment on that as well.

\[01:04:51] Tom：嗨，Tom，我来自达拉斯。这是我第一次参加伯克希尔和 Markel，最初是通过《Richer, Wiser, Happier》这本书以及阅读股东信了解到 Markel 的。它们非常优秀且诚实，我很欣赏。另外，我想提一点，我喜欢“客户至上”的理念，因为它能不断为 Markel 带来更多业务。我的问题有两个：其一，超额与剩余市场预计将增长高单位数，而 PNC 市场则在低单位数（约 5%+）。Markel 在超额与剩余市场已有相关经验，那么在新的灾难事件中，Markel 会利用这一优势吗？其二，关于综合赔付率，我们看到它有所上升，这是短期趋势吗？还是 Markel 团队正在评估其未来演变？我也想听听对此的看法。

\[01:05:53] Tom Gayner: All right. Let me summarise these two quick question points if you would. It’s combined which had a little trouble understanding. Okay, E\&S market trends of the percentage growth of that. I would suspect that the E\&S market which has been in the sort of golden era as many describe it. Growing faster than the standard markets. I don’t really have a point of view as to whether that continues or not, but my guess is that it does only because the world is more dynamic and the ability to plan ahead as opposed to react is becoming less and less and the sort of risks that are coming that are new for which there’s not tonnes and tonnes of actuarial data that needs E\&S flexibility to do that. I think the wind will continue to be in our sales there. And one of the reasons I don’t have much precision about that answer is because we don’t really think about the question in that way very much. We are happy to pursue the opportunities that exist and then just see how it works out rather than set a specific bar or target or goal to do that, but we think we are operating in a favourable business environment and we think we will continue to be able to operate in a favourable business environment.

\[01:05:53] Tom Gayner：好的，如果可以的话，让我来概括一下这两个简要问题。一是综合赔付率（combined ratio），这个术语可能有些难以理解；二是超额与剩余（E\&S）市场的增长百分比趋势。许多人称 E\&S 市场正处于“黄金时代”，其增长速度超过标准市场。我对这种状态是否会持续没有明确观点，但我的猜测是会持续，因为世界变得更加动态，可提前规划而非被动应对的能力日益重要。新风险不断涌现，往往缺乏大量精算数据，需要 E\&S 市场的灵活性来应对。我认为我们在该领域的优势将继续存在。之所以无法给出更精确的数字，是因为我们并不常以这种方式思考问题。我们更愿意抓住现有机会，观察其结果，而不是设定具体的门槛或目标。但我们认为自己正处在有利的商业环境中，并会继续在这样的环境中运营。

As our combined ratio, you know, we’ve been public and talked about this, there were some mistakes that we made over the last several years that are our own fault. And we did not execute as well as we would have liked to have done. We’ve made some meaningful changes within the organisation as we’ve learned some of that and thought about why some of those things happen and I would expect and you’ve already seen evidence of it in the first quarter, the combined ratio is starting to improve, and I think that will continue to be the case. The second thing is when you are looking at our combined ratio versus another combined ratio versus another combined ratio, you’re not looking at a strict apples-to-apples number. Different companies allocate costs differently. Different companies have different mixes of business that tend to perhaps have different cycles have different levels of profitability.

至于我们的综合赔付率，你们知道，我们已公开讨论过此事。在过去几年里，我们犯过一些错误，这是我们的责任，执行亦未达到预期。随着我们反思并学习原因，组织内已做出有意义的调整。从第一季度的数据可见，综合赔付率开始改善，我相信这一趋势将持续。其次，当你将我们的综合赔付率与其他公司的相比时，不能进行严格的“同苹果对比同苹果”比较。不同公司对成本的分配方式不同，不同公司的业务组合、周期及盈利水平也各异。

So for instance, as an example from the non-insurance world, in ventures, we have some businesses where the profit margin is very high. So you think, wow, that’s a really profitable business. We have some other businesses where the profit margin is very, very low and those tend to be distribution kind of businesses but the turnover is very high. So what makes them apples to apples is the return on capital. How much capital did it take to run this business that has 40% gross margins? How much capital did it take to run this business that has 9% gross margins and what are we earning on each of them per dollar of capital that we were allocating to those things? So what I hang my hat on for the Markel Group is that when you look and distil things to the return on capital, for things we’re pursuing in the insurance business, for things we’re pursuing in the ventures businesses, we have a return on capital threshold that we will allocate capital when we think it gets a return better than that.

例如，在非保险领域的风险投资业务中，我们有一些利润率非常高的项目，让人觉得“哇，这真是个盈利丰厚的业务”；但也有一些利润率极低且主要属分销类的业务，尽管它们的资金周转率很高。要做到真正的“同苹果对比同苹果”，关键在于资本回报率：运营一个毛利率 40% 的业务需要多少资本？运营一个毛利率 9% 的业务需要多少资本？我们每投入一美元资本分别能赚取多少收益？对于 Markel 集团而言，我始终以资本回报率为准——无论是保险业务还是风险投资业务，我们都设有资本回报率门槛，仅当预期回报超过该门槛时才会分配资本。

Even within the insurance business, if you look at something like surety as an example, the combined ratio there comes where the losses would tend to be not that much, but the work that is involved in making sure that all the contracts are performing, the promises they made in surety when the expensive handling that is relatively high, so the expense ratio might be high, the loss ratio low and it varies all across the book of the different kinds of insurance we have. So it’s an aggregate number. It’s an imprecise number. But it speaks to the way we use it as a tool to make sure we’re earning good returns on capital wherever we make the capital allocation decision. Thank you. Zone 2.

即便在保险业务内部，以保证保险（surety）为例，其综合赔付率中损失率通常不高，但为确保所有合同完全履约，无论是保证承诺还是后续理赔处理，费用开支都相对较高，因此费用率较高、损失率较低。这在我们各类保单组合中均有不同表现。所以综合赔付率只是一个汇总指标，不够精确，但它帮助我们在做出资本分配决策时，确保获得良好的资本回报。谢谢。分区 2。

\[01:09:46] Dr Malcolm Adams: Good morning and thank you for hosting. I’m Dr Malcolm Adams. I am a shareholder, economist, and startup founder. I have a two-part business economics question that never gets answered anywhere and I’m pretty sure you have a great answer here. Firstly, what strategies do you have in place for talent development and retention and would you ever consider apprenticeship programming of any kind? Secondly, how do you foster innovation and creativity among your current employees?

\[01:09:46] Dr Malcolm Adams：大家早上好，感谢你们的接待。我是 Dr Malcolm Adams，一位股东、经济学家兼初创企业创始人。我有一个在任何地方都得不到满意答案的双重商业经济学问题，但我相信你们会给出很好的解答。首先，你们有哪些人才培养和留用策略？你们是否会考虑任何形式的学徒制项目？其次，你们如何在现有员工中培养创新和创造力？

\[01:10:21] Tom Gayner: Thank you. Well, you said nobody’s ever answered that question satisfactorily. We’ll give it a whack and I hope you give us a better grade than never. Our chief strategy for talent development is to treat the people who are already here very well and to build deep relationships with the people we have. I mean we pay competitive salaries and wages and benefits and all the things that are table stakes. But I would say that the extra, the bonus which is intangible is the spirit in which people were treated around here and one of our creedal statements that our late former chair and Alan Kirshner wrote down, in 1986, as preparation for our IPO is a document we call the Markel style. And if you look at the annual report, if you go around any offices of Markel out anywhere in the world, you’ll see loose sites and posters and things on people’s desks that have the Markel style there and it talks about our people and we wish for them to operate with the zealous pursuit of excellence, yet retaining a sense of humour where they can reach their highest potential. That is the ethos and to the extent we do that well, what we have found is that attracts people and to make a Buffet analogy to that, so yesterday he talked about Ajit and the value that Ajit has brought into to that organisation. We’ll dial that back. Well, apparently Ajit was in his office on a Saturday. Hmm, that’s interesting.

\[01:10:21] Tom Gayner：谢谢。你说没有人能让这个问题得到满意回答，我们这就试试看，希望得到比“从未回答”更高的评分。我们的人才发展核心策略是善待现有人才，并与他们建立深厚的关系。我们的薪酬、工资和福利都是有竞争力的基本配置。但更为重要且无形的，是我们对待员工的精神面貌。我们的已故前主席与 Alan Kirshner 于 1986 年为 IPO 做准备时，撰写了一份我们称为“Markel 风格”的信条。如果你查看年报，或走访全球任何一家 Markel 办公室，你会在墙上、桌面上看到“Markel 风格”的标语，阐述我们的员工应当以对卓越的热忱追求为准则，同时保有幽默感，以促使他们发挥最大潜能。这种精神若能很好地贯彻，就能吸引到优秀人才。打个比方，昨天巴菲特谈到 Ajit 为组织带来的价值。我们来回顾一下：有人发现 Ajit 周六待在办公室，嗯，这很有趣。

And they’ve met, having not known one another. Ajit having no experience in the insurance industry, and Buffett hired him that day. I think you should work backwards from that circumstance and say, well, what possibly caused that to happen? Well, I’m not sure that I’m getting this exactly correct. Some people with more institutional knowledge than me can speak to it, but I think Ajit had a friend named Mike Goldberg who already worked at Berkshire and knew Ajit through some professional associations to just say this guy is wicked smart. And so because Mike Goldberg was already part of Berkshire and because Mike Goldberg had done well and was trusted and valued as a person, and whose voice would be heard and listened to by Buffett, when that an opportunity came up, Mike Goldberg said, hey, I know a guy and that’s how Ajit got to Berkshire.

他们素不相识，却就在那天相遇。Ajit 在保险行业毫无经验，但巴菲特当场聘用了他。我认为我们应该倒推这个情境：是什么促成了这一切？我未必完全了解细节，可能有人能提供更多内幕。但据我所知，Ajit 有位名叫 Mike Goldberg 的朋友，他已在伯克希尔工作，通过专业关系认识 Ajit，认为他非常聪明。由于 Mike Goldberg 已被伯克希尔所信任和重用，巴菲特会听取他的意见，于是当机会出现时，Mike Goldberg 便推荐道：“嘿，我认识一个人”，Ajit 就这样加入了伯克希尔。

And I think we tried to do much the same thing. If we treat the people who are already part of the family, well, they will refer friends, families, and smart people that they see. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over and over and over again. So I think that’s really the number one thing I would cite, specifically the apprenticeships we do things of that nature. Alan Kirshner, again started something called Partnership for the Future, which Ken Newsom was an early supporter of, and that’s to take high school kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and give them an opportunity to participate in the work world. And it did it in an industrial setting like Ken’s business did it in an office setting like our business. So we do that. We’re also involved in the cost of sorts involved in Christo Rey which is a spectacular programme. They do it in Miami. We do it in Richmond. I think we probably do it in some other offices as well where it’s high school kids who spend one day a week roughly in some employment situation. We just try to meet these people halfway with education and experience and role modeling to give people a chance. So we are actively involved in all those dimensions and it works. So it’s a fun place. Thank you.

我认为我们也在做类似的事。如果我们善待现有的“家人”，他们就会推荐他们认为优秀的朋友、家人和人才。我一次又一次地看到这种情况发生——这是我认为最重要的一点。至于学徒制，我们也有类似举措。Alan Kirshner 曾发起“未来伙伴计划”（Partnership for the Future），Ken Newsom 是早期支持者，项目选拔 disadvantaged 背景的高中生，给予他们进入职场的机会——有的在工业领域，有的类似我们办公环境。我们还参与 Cristo Rey 这样出色的计划，在迈阿密、里士满以及其他办公室，为高中生提供每周一天的工作体验。我们致力于在教育、经验和榜样示范方面给予帮助。这些都有效果，Markel 是一个有趣的工作场所。谢谢。

\[01:14:07] Michael Heaton: So I’m going to ask permission to sneak in on this one a little bit and I’m still simmering on two really important questions that were asked early on, perhaps two of the most important questions you could ask in this company today and it relates to the question about talent, talent development and innovation. So to get at it, let me come out backwards a little bit. I met a young woman, Thursday afternoon, walking around the Berkshire showcase, which I’m sure many of you did and enjoyed. She was working within one of the Marmon subsidiaries and she’s an engineer. She was talking about an innovative product that she was very excited about, which relates to charging the superchargers that, you know, we hear all about and see. She had recently left an 8-year job where she’d been incredibly unhappy for a variety of reasons to come to a Marmon subsidiary, and now you could just see the glow in her face and the pride in the work that she was doing. And she’s a happier person. Then it sounds like she was a year or two ago.

\[01:14:07] Michael Heaton：那么，我想插一句，继续回到早先提出的两个非常重要的问题，也许是今天在这家公司可以问出的最重要的问题之一，它们都与人才、人才发展和创新有关。首先，让我倒着说。我在周四下午逛伯克希尔展示区时遇到一位年轻女士，我相信许多人也去过并享受了那段体验。她在 Marmon 的一家子公司工作，是位工程师。她非常兴奋地谈到一款创新产品，与超级充电桩的充电相关。她此前在一份工作中待了 8 年，因各种原因非常不快乐，后来加入了 Marmon 的子公司，现在你可以从她脸上的光彩和她对工作所展现的自豪感看出，她要比一两年前要快乐得多。

So you contrast that or you set that experience alongside what you experienced the next day or the day after that sitting and listening to Warren and others talk about Berkshire and you wonder what’s the connection between a couple of people sitting here in Omaha in a very small office, a couple of dozen people and then 350, 60000 people, hopefully, many of whom have the same experience of that young woman. And it’s a really interesting relationship. And I think I would assert that what Warren and Charlie have done over the years is facilitated that type of thing across hundreds of thousands of people. Take that and back it up into two questions that were asked earlier, one of which Tom characteristically responded very modestly too so. I’ll expand upon that if you’ll allow me, the question was what’s been different since Tom took the realm of the CEO, and I think it was narrowed specifically to capital allocation. I’ll take the liberty to broaden that to what’s been different overall.

将这种体验与接下来一天或两天里坐在这里，聆听沃伦及其他人谈论伯克希尔的感受作对比，你会思考：几个人在奥马哈一个小办公室，几十个人，与数十万甚至 350,000–600,000 员工，许多人都可能有与那位年轻女士相同的经历，两者之间有什么联系？我认为，沃伦与查理这些年来所做的，正是在数十万人中促成了这种类型的体验。基于此，我们回到早先提出的两个问题，其中一个汤姆很谦逊地回答过。我将扩展一下，如果你们允许。一个问题是：自汤姆成为 CEO 后，有什么不同？当时聚焦于资本分配，我会大胆地将其扩展到整体上有哪些变化。

The second question was a question about knitting together and is it important to knit together the business? I think Tom, decades ago, decades ago, saw what we saw in Berkshire and didn’t think that we could copy it with exactness, but saw the potential of that idea within Markel and doing it our own way. I believe that we’re in the very beginning of a third chapter of this business and it’s subtle and easy to miss, but if we do it right and if we show up every day, I think we have the same potential to unleash mass amounts of talent development and innovation. What are those three chapters? Chapter 1, which you’re all familiar with. For those of you, we had a 10-year shareholder here earlier. Many have owned it longer than that. Chapter 1, world-class speciality insurance business. Steve, Tony and Allen started by buying up broken businesses and stealing the same underwriting discipline that we just talked about a minute ago. And that worked unbelievably well for a decade. Chapter 2 is a chapter on transition, dual transition, and we see some of that transition happening yesterday at Berkshire. We’re figuring out how to transition leadership and I think it easy to underestimate how difficult that may ultimately prove to be in any company, let alone for those who’ve had world-class leaders at the helm for a long time. So we’re going through both that. So you have three individuals who ran the company very successfully for decades and at the same time, we’re going through a transition of the underlying business model. And I think Chapter 2 and hard to put bookends on it exactly. Maybe it’s four years, maybe it’s five years, six years, something like that. We spent the last handful of years working our way through both of those transitions, both the transition of leadership from decades of history and the transition of the underlying fundamental model or architecture as Tom called it.

第二个问题是：是否重要将各业务“编织”在一起？我认为，几十年前，汤姆就像我们在伯克希尔所见，虽然不可能完全复制，但他看到了这一理念在 Markel 的潜力，并以我们自己的方式去实践。我相信，我们正处于公司业务第三章的开端，这一变化微妙且易被忽视，但只要我们做对、每天坚持，我认为我们有同样的潜力来释放大量人才发展和创新。那三章是什么？第一章，大家都熟悉。早先有位持股 10 年的股东，许多人持有更久。第一章是世界级专业保险业务。Steve、Tony 和 Allen 通过收购残缺业务，并采用我们刚才提到的同样的承保纪律，成功运作了十年。第二章是关于“双重转型”的篇章，我们昨天在伯克希尔就见证了部分转型。我们正探讨如何实现领导层转型，而我认为，任何公司要做好领导层接力都远比想象中困难，更何况伯克希尔有长期的世界级领导者掌舵。于是，我们同时经历这两种转型：由三位成功执掌公司数十年的前辈领导权交接，以及基本商业模式的转型——正如汤姆所称的“架构”转型。我认为，要给第二章设定确切时限并不容易，可能是四年，也可能是五六年左右。过去几年，我们一直在应对这两场转型：一是领导层交接，二是底层架构转变。

And if we have time today, we can get into the nuts and bolts of that. But I would say it is the most exciting thing that’s going on inside of this company today and it’s an idea, it was the seed of an idea inside Tom’s head for 20 years and we’ve been preparing and planning for that transition for decades. And so what has changed under Tom’s leadership in the last year and a half, we’re really just at the beginning of seeing the flowering of those ideas and those seeds that were planted decades ago.

如果今天有时间，我们可以深入探讨其细节。但我想说，这是公司目前最令人激动的事——这是一种理念，早在 20 年前就已在汤姆脑中萌芽，我们为此筹备和计划已经持续数十年。因此，在过去一年半里，汤姆领导下的变化，才刚刚开始显现，这些理念和种子正缓缓绽放。

\[01:19:14] Tom Gayner: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. Zone 1.

\[01:19:14] Tom Gayner：谢谢你，Mike。我很感激。分区 1。

\[01:19:22] Amy: Good morning. My name is Amy from Toronto. You started today’s session speaking about culture, and the saying is culture eats strategy for breakfast. Every company states that they offer a great culture. Is there a way that you quantify or measure culture? Can you comment on that?

\[01:19:22] Amy：早上好。我是来自多伦多的 Amy。您今天一开始就谈到了企业文化，还有一句话说“文化会把战略当早餐吃掉”。每家公司都声称自己拥有优秀的文化。有没有办法去量化或衡量文化？您能对此发表评论吗？

\[01:19:41] Tom Gayner: Sure. Yeah, it’s Peter Drucker who was the author of that famous quote of Red Drucker repeatedly for decades, and I think he’s exactly right. And I think if you read Drucker, one of the things that he would point you to is that it is almost impossible to quantify that. It is a qualitative statement and a qualitative approach of thoughtfulness and humanity that captures culture. Now, that being said, I think if you have a culture and you have this great culture but you’re not operating at a profit, you’re not going to last because you can’t keep the lights on. You can’t make the payroll. You can’t do well. So it does go hand in hand with that over the long run a great culture will not continue to persist and will not have the opportunity to grow if it is not accompanied by reasonable financial performance. I think one of the things you should take some comfort in, as a Markel shareholder, in a way to sense that the culture is indeed real and it’s vibrant and it’s persistent is to look at the long-term record of financial performance and look at places where perhaps it flattened out a bit or accelerated a bit and study a bit why it flattened out a bit and perhaps why it accelerated a bit. I think you would draw comfort from just looking at decades of data to say that I can’t quantify it, but that sure looks like it is passing the test of something that is indeed enduring and profitable at the same time.

\[01:19:41] Tom Gayner：当然。那句名言“文化会把战略当早餐吃掉”出自彼得·德鲁克，几十年来他不断引用这句话，我认为他说得非常正确。如果你读德鲁克的著作，他会指出，企业文化几乎无法量化。它是一种定性陈述和定性方法，包含了思考的深度和人文精神。但话说回来，如果你有伟大的文化却无法盈利，企业也难以为继——不开灯、无法发工资、业绩不佳。长期来看，只有伴随着合理的财务表现，优秀的文化才能持续并获得发展。作为 Markel 的股东，你可以通过查看长期财务业绩，找出那些业绩稍显平缓或加速的时期，并研究背后的原因，从几十年的数据中，你会感到安慰。虽然无法量化，但数据表明，这种文化确实经受住了时间和盈利性的考验。

At the next level, you can think about things like turnover. So here we are in Nebraska and my friend Judd Norman is over there. He was kind enough to take me to a Nebraska volleyball game, and if you’ve not been to a Nebraska women’s volleyball team, I can tell you right now, you’re not going to be able to get tickets. You’re missing something. It’s a spectacular experience. And I think they’ve sold out every game for the last 25,30 years. Something like that. And that’s the coach, John Cook, I think is in his 24th year of being the coach. There was one coach before him that’s 20-plus years. So since the modern era, post title 9 of women’s volleyball being a meaningful sport at the University of Nebraska, they had the one coach that was just sort of dragooned into it on an emergency basis on day one, but then in 50 years, they’ve essentially had two coaches, two coaches. That durability in the role that long tenure that tells you something. So if the University of Nebraska women’s volleyball coach was only there for 18 months or two years, I don’t think you can tell. And if there was high turnover in that, you can’t say it’s a bad culture, but you don’t know. But when you see people last in those kinds of jobs for 20-plus years and be as successful as they are pretty good odds that they have a good culture, so that’s turnover and endurance would be markers of a good culture. Thank you. Zone 2.

在下一个层面，你可以考虑员工流动率这类指标。就拿我们在内布拉斯加州的例子来说，我的朋友 Judd Norman 带我去看了内布拉斯加大学女子排球队的比赛，如果你没去过，我能告诉你现在连票都买不到——那是一场视觉盛宴。他们过去 25、30 年几乎场场爆满。主教练 John Cook 已执教第 24 个年头，之前的那位教练也有 20 多年执教经历。自 Title IX 时代以来，50 年里几乎只有两任教练，这种持久性本身就说明了问题。如果内布拉斯加女子排球队的教练只干了一年半或两年，你很难看出什么；如果教练频繁更换，你也不一定能说文化不好。但当你看到有人在这样的岗位上坚守 20 多年并取得成功，你就能较为肯定地判断这里有良好的文化。因此，低流动率和高持久性是衡量优秀文化的标志。谢谢。分区 2。

\[01:22:50] Ankit: Hi. Ankit from California here. Shareholder for almost five years. My question is at the Berkshire meeting when talking about exiting businesses, Warren commented that they exited their position in Markel. As someone who respects Buffett and Berkshire, how should we long-term shareholders, think about that?

\[01:22:50] Ankit：嗨，我是来自加州的 Ankit，已经持有股票近五年。我想问的是，在伯克希尔股东大会上，谈及退出业务时，沃伦提到他们已退出在 Markel 中的头寸。作为尊敬巴菲特和伯克希尔的长期股东，我们应如何看待这一点？

\[01:23:11] Tom Gayner: Great. I’ll take that. Well, you know, here’s the bottom line I found out about purchasing Markel in the same way that you did either the release of the 13 F holding the position. That was a good day. It’s cool. Has to be blunt about that, and I found out about him selling it in the same way that you did, IE the 13 F filing and they sold it and I, dang it, you know, it was definitely a good housekeeping seal of endorsement. Now there are other things going on that sort of not at liberty to talk about, but personally, as a Markel shareholder, I’ve not sold any stock. So if you’re worried about Markel stock from that signal the only thing I can tell you is I have not sold any stock and in fact, I have purchased more stock, not just through what I’m receiving compensation but taking money out of my pocket to buy it because that would sort of add depth and reality. The statement I made about thinking that Markel stock was undervalued relative to my estimate of intrinsic value. I mean, if I think that I should put some money down to back that up and I have. We enjoyed Berkshire’s presence in Markel. We regret its absence, but that’s in their control, not ours.

\[01:23:11] Tom Gayner：好的，由我来回答。你知道，我是通过你们那样的方式才知道伯克希尔买入 Markel——通过 13F 报告披露持仓。那一天对我们来说很美好，必须坦率地说，这很酷。同样，我也是通过 13F 报告才知道他们卖出了头寸，当时我心想：“该死”，这无疑是一个很好的背书。但还有其他一些我无法透露的原因，不过就我个人作为 Markel 股东而言，我没有卖出任何股票。如果你因此对 Markel 股票感到担忧，我唯一能告诉你的是，我没有卖出，反而买入了更多，不仅是因为我的薪酬中会收到一些股票，更是自掏腰包购买，以此表达更深的信心。我曾表示，相较于我对内在价值的估计，我认为 Markel 的股价被低估。如果我这么想，就应该拿出行动，我已经这样做了。我们很高兴看到伯克希尔曾持有 Markel，也对其离开表示遗憾，但那是他们的决定，不是我们的。

Secondly, we continue to have very warm relationships. I’ve had the very good fortune of serving on the Washington Post Board with Buffett for six or seven years, overlap. So we were at board dinners four times a year. We sat in the board room together. I started coming here in 1991 and believe it or not, that year there were only 700 people and that was in an era where you could just go up to him and introduce yourself and shake hands and talk to him, and I did, starting in 1991. So I’ve had the very good fortune of being in his presence and able to talk to him and he continues to have very warm relationships with me personally and Markel. So he has his own reasons for doing what he does, but as a shareholder worried about Markel, we continue to buy Markel stock.

其次，我们依然保持着非常良好的关系。我很幸运，曾与巴菲特在华盛顿邮报董事会共事六七年，期间我们每年四次一同参加董事会晚宴，并在董事会议室同坐。我从 1991 年开始来参加股东大会，那年只有 700 人，彼时你甚至可以上前与他自我介绍、握手交谈，而我就是从那时开始这样做的。因此，我有幸多次与他面对面交流，他对我个人以及对 Markel 依然非常友好。所以，他有自己的理由做出那样的决定，但作为 Markel 的股东，我们会继续买入 Markel 股票。

And someday, I think about this sometimes that’s a bit too go too far into this. But for instance, if you lived in Omaha and you lived in Nebraska and you’re a successful business person and you’ve lived here 20, 30, 40 years, I’d be sort of embarrassed not to own Berkshire stock. I mean, how could you miss it? How could you not get on board sometimes? And one of my goals in life is, you know, if you’ve been around Richmond, VA, and you’ve been there 10, 20, 30 years and you have exposure and experience to Markel. I went there to come with a time where you kind of be embarrassed to be from Richmond and not own some Markel stock. It won’t affect him, I promise you. But someday, I hope, you know, at the annual meeting 10 years from now when Buffett’s up there, people say, hey, aren’t you embarrassed about selling that Markel stock, but we’ll do the best we can. Zone 1.

有一天，我有时会想，这或许有点过头。但举个例子，如果你住在奥马哈、内布拉斯加，并且是一位成功的商人，在这里生活了 20、30、40 年，你或许会为自己没有持有伯克希尔股票而感到尴尬——你怎么能错过？怎么能不加入呢？而我的人生目标之一是，如果有人在里士满、弗吉尼亚待了 10、20、30 年，对 Markel 有了解或经验，我希望他们会为没有持有一些 Markel 股票而感到尴尬。这不会影响他（巴菲特），我向你保证。但有一天，我希望在十年后的股东大会上，当巴菲特站在台上时，人们会说：“嘿，你不觉得退出 Markel 的股票头寸很尴尬吗？”当然，我们会尽力而为。分区 1。

[01:26:21] James Keeler: Hi, Mr. Gaynor. My name is James Keeler from Great Falls, VA. My question is, what do you think about the potential future insurance acquisitions or the value of existing operations? What variables do you consider to be the most important, the size and growth of float, the profitability of float expressed in the combined ratio, or is it a much more qualitative consideration of the manager to price into the market the way the flow of any operating arm of the acquirer is invested or the product category? Thank you.

[01:26:21] James Keeler：嗨，Gaynor 先生。我叫 James Keeler，来自弗吉尼亚州大瀑布市。我想问，您如何看待未来潜在的保险并购或现有业务的价值？您认为哪些变量最重要？是保费浮存金的规模及增长、以综合赔付率表示的浮存金盈利能力，还是更偏向于管理者在将收购方各运营部门的资金投向或产品类别定价时的定性考量？谢谢。

[01:26:54] Tom Gayner: Absolutely. Thanks for the question. I will take the first pass and then I’ll ask Jeremy to chime in. So for instance, the IPO of Markel itself back in 1986. Markel was a tiny little regional insurance company at the time. We had very little capital. We needed some in order to grow. We also needed to sell some stock and get it publicly listed so that different members of the Markel family could have liquidity for their stake and there could be a sorting and separation between what members of the family were continuing to work in the business versus those that were not and they could have liquid stock and liquidity for their ownership interest. So from that start, the first major acquisition we did was the Shand Evanston in Chicago, and it was a two-step deal because we didn’t have much money. So we started our leg our way into it ‘87 and ‘90. Two steps. Well, that took us from being a national, I mean, a regional company to a national company.

[01:26:54] Tom Gayner：当然。感谢提问。我先做个初步回答，然后请 Jeremy 补充。比如，Markel 自身的 IPO 是在 1986 年。那时 Markel 只是家小规模的地区性保险公司，资本非常有限，需要注入资金才能增长。我们也需要通过发售股票并上市，让不同的 Markel 家族成员获得流动性，并区分继续留在公司工作的家族成员与非在职成员，让他们的持股可以变现。由此，我们的首笔重大并购是在芝加哥收购了 Shand Evanston，因为手头资金不多，这笔交易分两步完成，分别在 1987 年和 1990 年。这一举措将我们从地区性公司升级为全国性公司。

And by the way, Shand had some challenges. That’s one of the reasons it was for sale. And one of the reasons we could afford it was because, you know, we were capital-constrained and didn’t have much money at the time. In the first couple of years of our ownership of Shand, A) fixing the challenges that existed there already and layering on our conservative accounting and financial practises where we had to get the reserve levels up so that they could develop more likely to be redundant and deficient. That created the J curve where for two or three years people were scratching their heads and saying guys, why did you do that? And then subsequently, things went well. And for the next decade, we’ve made smaller tuck-in acquisitions or different speciality books for all the factors and things that you would have cited but not that much top-line growth.

顺便提一下，Shand 也存在一些问题，这也是它被出售的原因之一。我们当时资金紧张，恰好负担得起这笔交易。收购后的最初几年，我们一方面解决了已有挑战，另一方面在保守会计与财务实践上加大准备金，以确保更有“冗余”而非“不足”。这就形成了一个 J 型曲线，头两三年大家都不解，质疑“为什么要这样做？”，但随后情况好转。在接下来十年里，我们进行了一些小规模的“插入式”收购或收购不同的专业险种，虽然对收入增长的推动不大，但整体现有业务得到了补充。

Then came the opportunity to buy Terra Nova, which also had some challenges and troubles which were well-known. The deal was renegotiated once to reprice because of some of the things we found out during our due diligence process. But in the early days of turnover for the first year or two, that also created a J curve where earnings were diminished by the activities and the corrective actions we had to take place at Terra Nova before it subsequently really earned its position as it has now of being, you know, a crown jewel in the realm of Markel. But people got nervous because they saw that J curve and then I would tell people look, we’ve already gone from being a regional company to a national company and a national company to an international company so unless we’re going to go from an international company to an intergalactic company the era of us doing these more than double the size of the company, complete game changer acquisition has diminished. So it’s okay. We’re not going to surprise you with one of these big projects that have some short-term cost. Well, then we started Markel Ventures just to create some angst and uncertainty of people thinking we were doing things that we didn’t know what we were getting into it, but in the fullness of time Markel Ventures has developed beautifully and I think people were growing increasingly comfortable with what we’re doing there.

随后，我们迎来了收购 Terra Nova 的机会。这家公司也存在众所周知的问题，且我们在尽调过程中发现了一些新情况，因此需重新谈判并调整交易价格。并购完成后的前一两年，又出现了一个 J 型曲线：因为整改与修复措施，利润被压低，但随后 Terra Nova 顺利转型，成为 Markel 的“皇冠明珠”。有人看到 J 曲线后感到担忧，我便告诉他们：我们已经从地区性公司发展到全国性、再到国际化公司；除非接下来要发展到“星际化”公司，否则我们不会再做那种一举将公司规模翻倍、彻底改变格局的大手笔并购。于是没什么好惊讶的，但我们又启动了 Markel Ventures，让外界对我们的新领域投入口感到忐忑；随着时间推移，Markel Ventures 发展得相当出色，人们对我们的新举措也越来越认可。

Well, then we do things like the insurance-linked securities and the insurance services because there were opportunities there. But in the realm and world of insurance, we have a pretty robust set of companies products offering services that cover the waterfront both product terms and geographically, so things we would tend to do in the realm of insurance going forward would probably not be transformational in the ways that things we’ve already done have. I think we, we got a pretty good team on the field now that being said, we’re always looking for opportunities and we’re looking for them all around the world. And when you’re leaning in on your front foot and you’re looking for these, you do find things, but it probably won’t be double the size of the company. Jeremy, any thoughts?

接着，我们又涉足保险关联证券（ILS）和保险服务等领域，因为那里也存在机会。但在保险行业，我们已有一套相当完善的产品与服务体系，涵盖多种险种与地域，因此未来在保险端的并购很难再像以往那样带来颠覆性变化。我认为我们的团队已经很不错了，不过我们始终在全球范围内寻找机会。只要积极出击，就能发现机会，只是不会再出现“一口气将公司规模翻倍”的大型并购。Jeremy，有何补充？

[01:30:55] Jeremy Noble: Maybe just quickly. It acts as if you can come in many different forms too. So Tom gave the lustre of examples of doubling the size of the company and going from a smaller player to a U.S. National to an international, but we look at talent, we look at teams, we look at bits of books of business and we also look at like smaller sort of MGA-type operations. So Tom shared his story earlier about Frederick Wolfe who had an MGA within the family in Germany. Well, Frederick, now overseas, our Continental European operations, our solution to Brexit when that occurred was the formation of an insurance entity based in Germany and Frederick overseas that. So it was a small MGA and it is now a large business that we organically grew. So acquisitions can come in many forms. I think it wouldn’t be transformational like Tom says, but for the most part, what we’d be looking for is how we continue to build out capabilities and how we complement the existing platform that we have. I love the teams we have. I love the books of businesses and offerings that we have. We have a lot of ways to drive that organically. But if there are ways to just add capability, we’re always open and looking.

[01:30:55] Jeremy Noble：简单补充一下。并购可以采取多种形式。Tom 举了将公司规模翻倍、从地区性玩家到全国再到国际的例子，但我们也会关注人才、团队、业务组合的局部版块，还会留意类似 MGA（管理型总经销人）的小型业务。Tom 之前提到过 Frederick Wolfe，他在德国的家族企业里创办了一个 MGA。Brexit 发生后，我们在德国成立保险实体，Frederick 负责海外运营。那个小 MGA 现已发展成我们有机壮大的大型业务。由此可见，并购形式多样。正如 Tom 所说，未来不会是那种颠覆性的巨型并购；我们更关注如何持续提升能力、补强现有平台。我很喜欢现有团队、业务组合和产品，我们有很多方式进行有机增长，但若有机会补充关键能力，我们也会积极探索。

[01:32:06] Tom Gayner: And for those of you, I don’t know, some friends of Frederick are in the room here. So when you go back to Germany and Germany overrepresented in the questions yesterday in Berkshire, please tell Frederick all the nice things we said about him and tell him that we meant them. Zone 2.

[01:32:06] Tom Gayner：在座的如果有 Frederick 的朋友，回到德国后请代我转告他，昨天伯克希尔大会上大家对他的一切好评都是真心赞赏。分区 2。

\[01:32:22] Tino Moskowitz: Yeah. Good morning. My name is Tino Moskowitz. I’m from Germany.

\[01:32:22] 提诺·莫斯科维茨：是的。早上好。我的名字是提诺·莫斯科维茨。我来自德国。

\[01:32:29] Tom Gayner: I love it when a plan comes together. Yeah, yeah.

\[01:32:29] 汤姆·盖纳：当一切按计划进行时，我最喜欢这种感觉。是的，是的。

\[01:32:34] Tino Moskowitz: Most of us saw the movie yesterday, especially regarding Charlie. That’s why I have questions, especially in remembrance of Charlie as well, because they were also mentioned in the movie. Why do you still stick to the EBITDA number while Charlie also showed yesterday specially mentioned EBITDA as bullshit earnings? And the second question is if I read your proxy statement correctly then I’ve seen some spending on compensation consulting for \$180,000 or even more. And also Charlie mentioned in his talks about the misjudgement that consulting companies are also something– I just want to know what for this money was spent. If you are so sure that you have great people in your business and you are able to get great people to your business, what for this money was spent? Thank you very much.

\[01:32:34] 提诺·莫斯科维茨：我们大多数人昨天都看了那部电影，特别是关于查理的部分。这就是为什么我有这些问题，同时也是为了纪念查理，因为他们也在电影中被提到。为什么你们仍然坚持使用EBITDA这个数字，而查理昨天也专门提到EBITDA是“狗屁收益”？第二个问题是，如果我正确阅读了你们的代理声明，我看到在薪酬咨询上花费了18万美元甚至更多。查理在他的演讲中也提到，对咨询公司的误判也是一个问题——我只是想知道这笔钱到底花在哪些方面。如果你们如此确定你们的企业里有优秀的人才，并且能够吸引优秀的人才，那么这笔钱到底花在了哪里？非常感谢。

\[01:33:50] Tom Gayner: Now let me take both of those questions and they’re very good questions and they’re very fair. First is the question about EBITDA and in the movie, I had one of the snippets about Charlie’s statements over the years and in a Charlie-esque way, he says anytime you see the phrase EBITDA, you should call, you substitute bullshit for that. And that is true to a certain degree. But it is not 100% true, and in fact, recently Mike led a gathering of the Markel Group and tried to again the process of knitting people together from different parts of the organisation. And in one of those moments within that time and the time that was allotted to me to talk about stuff, we talked about the concept of truth. Making a true statement. So for Charlie, Charlie can say things because he’s Charlie, he says EBITDA is bullshit earnings. As Stephen Colbert would say that’s truethy. But not since they see the truth. So Andrew, take your prop here. Got a can of Coke. And obviously, we have a rooting interest in Coca-Cola on the Board of Directors there, which is a lot of fun. And so I opposed this question to try to get to the concept of capital T, truth, and truth that perhaps we should hold a little more lightly.

\[01:33:50] 汤姆·盖纳：现在让我来回答这两个问题，它们都非常好，也非常公正。第一个问题是关于EBITDA。在电影中，我引用了查理这些年来的某段话，以一种查理式的方式，他说每当你看到“EBITDA”这个词时，你应该把它替换为“狗屁收益”。在某种程度上，这话确实有道理。但它并非百分之百正确。事实上，最近迈克主持了一次Markel集团的聚会，试图再次将组织各部门的人们融合在一起。在那个聚会中，包括分配给我的发言时间里，我们讨论了“真相”的概念——如何说出一个真实的陈述。对查理来说，他可以这样说，因为他就是查理，他说EBITDA是狗屁收益。正如斯蒂芬·科尔伯特会说的那是“真话”，但人们看到的真相却不止如此。安德鲁，把你的道具拿过来，一罐可口可乐。显然，我们在可口可乐董事会中有职位，这很有趣。所以我先反问这个问题，是想引入“大写的真相”概念，以及那个我们也许应该更谨慎对待的“真相”。

\[01:33:50] Tom Gayner continues: And so if you worked inside the Coca-Cola Company, if you were an employee of the Coca-Cola Company and I asked you what is the book value per share of the Coca-Cola Company? That is a question which can be answered. So if you go to the annual report of the Coca-Cola Company and as an accountant you look at the shareholders equity account and you see that number and you divide that by the number of shares outstanding. You get a number which is the book value per share of Coca-Cola. And I don’t remember this number exactly, but in rough measure, I think it’s about \$6 a share. If you looked at the Coca-Cola financial statement. Now the market value of Coca-Cola is 60-ish dollars a share. So when you take that one share of Coca-Cola that you owned because you’re inside Coca-Cola and you’re looking at their financial statements, what’s the book value of a share of Coca-Cola? You come up with the answer \$6 and you can show me the documents of the trail that that’s correct. But if you’re a Berkshire shareholder, what is the book value of Berkshire that relates to a share of Coca-Cola? Well, the answer to that is when it’s presented on the financial statements of Berkshire, it is presented at the market price, \$60.00 a share. So mean that’s the market close. So something that one way of looking at it is \$6 and that’s the truth. Looking at it in another way as a shareholder of Berkshire you see \$60. Well, that’s true too, the one is \$6 and one is \$60. Wait a minute. It gets even weirder than that.

\[01:33:50] 汤姆·盖纳继续说道：所以如果你在可口可乐公司内部工作，是该公司的员工，我问你可口可乐的每股账面价值是多少？这是一个可以回答的问题。你只要翻到可口可乐公司的年报，作为会计师，你会看到股东权益科目中的该金额，然后将其除以在外流通股数，就得到了可口可乐的每股账面价值。我不记得这个数字的精确数值，但大约是每股6美元。如果你看可口可乐的财务报表，会得出这个结论。而可口可乐的市值约为每股60美元。所以，当你作为可口可乐内部员工，根据他们的报表计算时，每股账面价值是6美元，你可以拿出文件来证明这是正确的。但如果你是伯克希尔的股东，那么与一股可口可乐相关的伯克希尔账面价值是多少呢？答案是，在伯克希尔的财务报表中，它是按市价呈现的，也就是每股60美元。也就是说，一种看法是6美元，这是“真相”；另一种看法作为伯克希尔股东你看到的是60美元，这也是真相。但等等，这还不止如此，事情变得更奇怪。

\[01:33:50] Tom Gayner: Markel owns shares in Berkshire. And Berkshire trades roughly 1 1/2 times book in the market right now, in rough, rough, rough terms. So that’s \$60.00 of book value at Berkshire related to that one share of Coke becomes on our books \$90.00 one and 1/2 times to \$60. So I ask you, what is the book value of Coca-Cola, \$6, %60 or \$90, all of the above, none of the above, or something else? And I can argue for any one of those answers. And if I was taking a test and I gave my answer and the teacher graded it incorrectly, I would argue with them about why I was right with whatever answer I would have come up with. So what I want to point out in that statement and translate EBITDA is that EBITDA is one of those terms of language that is getting at a fundamental truth. So just like \$6, \$60 or \$90 is true about the book value of Coca-Cola. You need to take the next step. I mean, you could almost say, well, what is it really? Well, what I would say is that the economic value of Coca-Cola is what really matters. That’s an income statement business, not so much a balance sheet. They have income statements. They have balance sheets. They have statements of cash flow, and all come to have those three, but in different businesses, different ones of those statements are more important than the other.

\[01:33:50] 汤姆·盖纳：Markel持有伯克希尔的股份，而伯克希尔目前在市场上的市净率大约是1.5倍，大致如此。因此，与那一股可口可乐相关的账面价值60美元，在我们账面上就变成了90美元（1.5倍于60美元）。所以我问你，可口可乐的账面价值到底是6美元、60美元还是90美元？以上都是？都不是？还是其他什么答案？我完全可以为任何一个答案辩护。如果我在考试中给出了答案，却被老师批错了，我也会和老师争论为什么我是对的。所以我想在这里强调并“翻译”EBITDA：EBITDA就是这样一个用来表达某种基本真相的术语。就像可口可乐的账面价值可以是真的6美元、60美元或90美元一样，你需要更进一步思考。你几乎可以问：“那它到底是什么？”而我会说，可口可乐真正重要的是它的经济价值。这是一个基于损益表的企业，而不仅仅是一个资产负债表的企业。它们有损益表、有资产负债表、有现金流量表，这三张报表都有其意义，但在不同业务中，各自的重要性有所不同。

\[01:33:50] Tom Gayner: So to describe the economic value of Coca-Cola, it’s the income saving and the cash flows that really create the value, not so much the balance sheet. So I would say the market price of \$60. If you told me I only had to give you one number, I would say the market is the closest approximation to the truth. So when we’re looking at businesses within Markel Ventures in particular and many of the sellers of these businesses think in terms of EBITDA and certainly their investment bankers do, we would not be serving your interest if we went into the seller and said, look, I know this is how you looked at your business. Let me explain how you look at it differently. You know what? They’re on to the next buyer. So our job is to take the number they give us and say, what is it really and we and Andrew and Jason and Peter and Mike, myself, we look at that number, we look at EBITDA and we adjust that to what we think the real earnings are and the real cash flows and what the real depreciation is and what the amortisation is.

\[01:33:50] 汤姆·盖纳：因此，要描述可口可乐的经济价值，真正创造价值的是收益和现金流，而不是资产负债表。所以如果让我只告诉你一个数字，我会说市场价格60美元最接近真相。当我们特别评估Markel Ventures旗下的企业时，很多卖家以及他们的投行都是从EBITDA的角度来考虑的。如果我们去跟卖家说：“我们知道这是你们看待自己企业的方式，让我来告诉你们我们如何看”，他们只会转身去找下一个买家。因此我们的工作是拿到他们给出的数字，然后问：“它真正代表的是什么？”我和安德鲁、杰森、彼得、迈克都会查看这个数字，我们研究EBITDA，然后根据我们的判断，对真实收益、真实现金流、真实折旧和真实摊销进行调整。

And the amortisation if you really think about it in economic terms, sometimes it’s a negative, sometimes it actually should be a positive. So we do think about that and the last statement I’ll make and I’ll, again, I’ll drag poor Susan into this. So she retired about a year and a half ago and she has been pursuing some interests that she had that she didn’t have time to tend to when she was raising three kids and running a business and being married to me, that’s full-time. That’s several full-time jobs. So he’s been able to read and study some things and so she’s gone down this rabbit hole of physics and sort of the borderland between physics and quantum physics, and there’s a book called When We Cease to Understand the World and Hell-Go-Land and The Rigor of Angels is sort of the series that she’s been reading. It doesn’t really do you too much good, at least for me to get into the math. But as I try to read and I try to keep up with her, the number one takeaway I would have about a layman’s understanding between sort of the world of Newtonian physics and quantum physics is that things that are true in one dimension are not true in the other and be comfortable with the borderland and the ambiguity and the interpretation that is involved, because if you’re really just trying to get to the truth of things and you’re only using one side of it and not all of it, you won’t get there.

如果你从经济学角度真正考虑，摊销有时是负数，有时实际上应该是正数。所以我们会考虑这一点。最后我要说的一点，我还要再次把可怜的苏珊扯进来。她大约在一年半前退休，此后一直在追求一些她育儿、经营生意、做我妻子时没有时间顾及的兴趣——那几乎相当于几份全职工作。因此她得以阅读和研究一些内容，结果她走进了物理学，尤其是经典物理学与量子物理学交界地带的“兔子洞”。她在读的一系列书包括《当我们不再理解世界时》、《地狱之地》和《天使的严苛》。对你们来说，这对我来说至少，数学部分并没太大帮助。但当我试图阅读、试图跟上她的时候，我作为外行对经典物理与量子物理最主要的体会是：在一个维度中为真的事情，在另一个维度并不为真，你必须接受那种边界地带的模糊性和解读性，因为如果你只是用单一视角去追求事物的真相，而不结合多重视角，你是到不了那里去的。

So in the world in which we live, EBITDA is a measure which a lot of agents and a lot of people transact. And in order for us to continue to grow and get to real cash money, which is my old accountant’s term for what we’re really looking for, we have to be able to translate EBITDA to cash and we don’t take EBITDA at face value. We do the work and translate it into cash to try to make good decisions. Thank you.

所以在我们所处的世界中，EBITDA是许多经纪人和许多人进行交易时使用的衡量指标。为了让我们继续成长并获得“真正的现金”，这是我以前的会计师对我们真正追求目标的称呼，我们必须能够将EBITDA转换为现金，而不是照搬EBITDA数值。我们会进行必要的工作，将其转换为现金，以便做出明智的决策。谢谢大家。

\[01:41:09] Michael Heaton: Tom, on the compensation committee question if I can offer a thought on that. My guess would be what Charlie was pointing to is that compensation committees are often, I mean, it’s a pretend game, is what he’s saying, that it’s held up to pretend like the function and purpose of the compensation consultants is to keep management compensation fair when the reality is, is that the management team just uses those consultants as pawns in their hands to get leverage and to push for more and more compensation. I think that’s probably what he’s pointing to. I can promise you as one who’s very involved in that process that is not how our compensation committee uses the consultants. They’re there to provide data which is necessary and useful in the decisions that they make, but it doesn’t go beyond that.

\[01:41:09] 迈克尔·希顿：汤姆，关于薪酬委员会的问题，如果我可以提供一些想法。我猜查理指的是什么，就是薪酬委员会往往是一场“假戏”，他所说的是，咨询公司的功能和目的是为了让管理层薪酬看起来公平，而现实情况是管理团队只是把那些咨询公司当作棋子来施压，以谋取越来越多的薪酬。我认为这大概就是他的意思。我可以向你保证，作为深度参与这一过程的人，我们的薪酬委员会并不是这样使用咨询公司的。他们只是提供必要且有用的数据，供委员会在决策时参考，但并不会超越这层作用。

As a real-life example, you might have noticed this very subtle change that was made in the last few months for our executive compensation, this management team felt it was important even it was just it was just symbolic as we move into this sort of Chapter 3 that I talked about ago that we that we mirror the commitment that we’re asking from all of you. We said it over and over again we don’t get to do this without you. This is a big team effort and the biggest thing we ask from you is permission to make long-term decisions in a world where most shareholders encourage management to make short-term decisions. That’s our ask of you. We wanted, again, to have even if it was a smaller token a symbolic reflection of the fact that we’re in it the same way. So we changed a portion of our long-term stock-based compensation from a three-year hold to an 8-year hold. So we add an additional five-year hold even post-retirement for members of the management team. When we suggested that of our own accord to the comp committee, they took it to the comp consultants and you know the comp consultant said, well, you can’t do that, nobody else does that. That’s a bad idea. You’re not going to be able to recruit talent. We said our comp committee said great, thanks for the data. Thanks for letting us know how other companies behave. That’s not how we behave. We’re in a long-term game. We’re going to go ahead and do it anyway.

举个实际例子，大家可能已经注意到，过去几个月里我们对高管薪酬做了一个非常微妙的调整。在我之前提到的“第三章”节点上，管理团队认为，即便只是象征性的一步，也要与大家要求的承诺保持一致。我们一再强调，没有你们的支持，我们无法做到这一点。这是一个团队协作的大项目，而我们向你们最大的请求，就是在大多数股东鼓励管理层做短期决策的环境中，给予我们做长期决策的许可。这就是我们对你们的期望。我们希望，通过哪怕是很小的象征性举措，反映出我们与大家同舟共济。因此，我们将部分长期股票激励的持有期从三年延长至八年，即使是在退休后，管理团队成员仍需额外持有五年。我们自发地向薪酬委员会提出这一建议，他们又将其提交给薪酬咨询公司，咨询公司则表示：“你们不能这么做，没人这样做。这是个坏主意，你们招不到人才。”我们薪酬委员会的回应是：“很好，谢谢你们提供的数据，让我们了解其他公司的做法。但那不是我们的做法。我们玩的是长期游戏，我们还是要这么做。”

\[01:43:43] Tom Gayner: Mike, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mike, for catching my omission of not getting to the second point, but he’s exactly right. Zone 1.

\[01:43:43] 汤姆·盖纳：迈克，是的。谢谢你。谢谢你指出我遗漏了第二点，他说得完全正确。一区。

\[01:43:55] Jonathan: Hi, I’m Jonathan from Hong Kong. So thank you for hosting this event. So I have two questions. The first question is about the Circle of Competence. So, Charlie said that we should fish where the fish are, but we should also stay within our circle of competence. How should we balance that? How do we know what we don’t need to know in different markets? So for example, Berkshire bought this car with this deal distribution thing a few years ago. Clearly, they did not understand that perhaps there were radiant governments and all that. And the Japanese bets as well and the BYD bet as well. So how do bands between fishing where the fish are and staying within your circle of competence? And my second question is about diversification. So I think 15% of your investment portfolio is in Berkshire, which is quite concentrated, but the other stuff is actually quite, you know, 2%, 3% bets or even like 1% bets. So is there a case for diversification like this or should we really concentrate on our 20 or 10 best ideas like occupy 80, 90% of our portfolio. Thanks.

\[01:43:55] 乔纳森：大家好，我是来自香港的乔纳森。感谢你们举办这次活动。我有两个问题。第一个问题是关于“能力圈”的。查理说我们应该在有鱼的地方垂钓，但也要待在自己的能力圈内。我们该如何平衡这一点？我们如何判断在不同市场中哪些东西是我们无需了解的？例如，伯克希尔几年前投资了一家汽车分销业务。显然，他们没能理解其中可能涉及的各种监管机构，另外还有对日本市场的押注，以及对比亚迪的押注等。所以，如何在“有鱼的地方垂钓”与“保持在能力圈内”之间取得平衡？我的第二个问题是关于多元化的。我认为你们投资组合中有15%投入了伯克希尔，这相当集中；而其他投资则真正是2%、3%甚至1%的小赌注。那么，这种分散投资是否合理？还是说我们应当真正聚焦于20个或10个最优想法，让它们占据组合的80%或90%？谢谢。

\[01:45:03] Tom Gayner: Right. Well, thanks for the question. And first, the two quotes, fish where the fish are and stay within your circle of competence. I agree with that 100%, but that is a static statement. And life is not static. It doesn’t stand still. So the fish are here now, but sometimes they move to different ponds. Sometimes ponds get overfished. So fishing where the fish are to me also implies the dynamic sense of you always got to see where the fish are cause they don’t stay in the same place. So you got to keep moving. Similarly, circle of competence, Charlie is the beautiful model of a lifelong learner. So at age 62, whatever circle of competence I have if it’s the same one I had when I was 14. Shame on me. That’s stupid. So at age 62, do I think I’m done? Do I think I have firm boundaries in my circle of competence? No, no. Just like Susan’s studying physics now. And I won’t tell you what age she is, but I’ll let that go.

\[01:45:03] 汤姆·盖纳：好，谢谢你的提问。首先，“在有鱼的地方垂钓”和“保持在能力圈内”这两句格言，我完全赞同，但那是静态的表述，而生活不是静止的。鱼儿现在在这里，有时会游到别的池塘，有时一个池塘会被过度捕捞。所以“在有鱼的地方垂钓”在我看来也意味着动态的意义：你必须持续观察鱼儿在哪里，因为它们不会一直待在同一个地方，因此你得不断移动。同样，“能力圈”方面，查理是终身学习者的绝佳榜样。62岁的我，如果能力圈和14岁时没区别，那真该羞愧，这太愚蠢。所以在62岁时，我认为自己学业有成、永远划定好了能力圈吗？绝不，就像苏珊现在在学物理一样。我不会告诉你她几岁，但我就先不提了。

You know, you should always be expanding that and learning new things. So the interaction between both your circle of competence moving and where the fish are moving I think allows for the dynamic nature of the world we actually live in, and you’re making a mistake if you ever, if you ever pin it down to any one circumstance or time. So that implies the willingness to do different things as time goes by. Berkshire has certainly been a great model of that. Markel, I believe is on the path of being a great model of that as well.

你应该不断拓展能力圈，学习新事物。所以能力圈的移动与鱼儿所在位置的移动之间的互动，才契合了我们现实世界的动态本质。如果你把它钉死在某个特定情况或时间点上，那就是犯错。这意味着随着时间流逝，你要愿意尝试不同的事物。伯克希尔无疑很好地诠释了这一点，我相信Markel也在成为这一优秀范例的道路上。

Your second question related to diversification and number of holdings in the portfolio. You’re correct in that our position in Berkshire is oversized and it’s one that probably is disproportionate to the way most people own it institutionally. Although people individually do. And by the way, this little fun fact. We bought our first share of Berkshire in December of 1990. It was the first stock I bought when I joined the company, and as of the most recent quarter, our unrealized gain, our unrealized gain on our Berkshire holdings is now over a billion dollars. One stop.

你第二个问题是关于投资组合的多元化和持仓数量。你说得对，我们在伯克希尔的持仓过大，可能与大多数机构投资者的持仓比例不成比例。尽管也有人会个人持有。顺便说个小趣事：我们在1990年12月买入了第一股伯克希尔，这是我加入公司后买的第一只股票。截至最近一个季度，我们在伯克希尔上的未实现收益已经超过10亿美元。

The portfolio as a whole as of the end of the first quarter, I think the unrealized gain went over \$7 billion which is a new record level. And a couple of things about that, I mean, we are a full taxpayer. So by virtue of the fact that we tend to buy and hold things for all kinds of reasons, one of the side benefits of that is that we get to defer the tax liability and we have roughly a billion and a half dollars that if we were to turn over the portfolio, we would have to write a cheque and pay that in the form of taxes whereas we still get to use and have that money working for you as shareholders. And we think that’s very important and we think it helps us frame and support long-term decision making.

整个投资组合截至第一季度末的未实现收益已突破70亿美元，创下新纪录。有几点值得一提：我们是一家完全纳税的公司。由于我们倾向于出于各种原因买入并长期持有，副作用之一就是我们得以延缓纳税。若要完全变现投资组合，我们需要支付约15亿美元的税款，而现在这笔资金仍在继续为你们——股东——产生收益。我们认为这非常重要，有助于我们制定并支持长期决策。

The third point, this is just mechanics, but I think it’s very important. So that idea of 20 punches that Buffett talked about and you should have a big concentration in your top 20. Well, we sort of do and that I think roughly 60% of our equity portfolio is in the top 20. Secondly, there is a mechanical precise tide-out way of counting, but there’s also a more thoughtful way of counting. So as an example, and this is publicly disclosed, if you look at our 13 F, you can see it. We own both Home Depot and Lowe’s. Is that 2 holdings? Is that one holding? Is that 1.3 holdings, or is it 1.7 holdings? My assertion would be it’s not one and it’s not two, it’s somewhere in between and if you look at our owning of some other things they kind of cluster. We have John Deere and Caterpillar as examples in size and big numbers. So I think there’s probably more concentration among the best holdings than you might think mathematically, and if you looked at the list of holdings and you kind of did sort of the where 1 + 1 + 1 is not three, but something less than three, you would probably come to a conclusion that this is a little more concentrated and perhaps a little more active than you might think at first glance. Thank you. Zone 2.

第三点，这是技术层面，但我认为非常重要。巴菲特谈到的“20次出拳”理念——你应该把资产高度集中到前20大持仓——我们也大致如此，我估计我们股票组合约60%集中于前20大持仓。其次，有一种机械精确的统计方式，也有更具思考性的统计方式。举个公开披露的例子，看看我们的13F文件，你会发现我们既持有家得宝，又持有劳氏。这是两个持仓？还是一个持仓？是1.3个持仓，还是1.7个持仓？我的观点是，它既不是1，也不是2，而是在两者之间；如果你再看我们对其他一些股票的持仓，它们往往是成簇的，比如约翰迪尔和卡特彼勒，规模也很大。所以我认为在最优持仓之间的集中度，可能比你从数学上想象的更高。如果你把持仓列表拿来，并把1+1+1算作不是3，而是小于3的某个数，那你可能会得出这样的结论：我们的组合比乍看之下更集中，也可能更为主动。谢谢。二区。

[01:49:16] Michael: Michael from Dallas, TX. I am a shareholder. I was thrilled to learn today that I got in at a lower cost basis than Berkshire actually. So that’s great news. I guess my question is related to what was asked earlier, I didn’t know was going to ask that question and I’ll try and ask it in a slightly different way. I am interested in incentive compensation for your executives and not the named executives in the proxy. We can see that there. I’m talking more about either the heads of business groups not naming the proxy or the heads of businesses at Markel Ventures. Can you share any thoughts on how you think about their incentive compensation other than what you already shared? That was very helpful what you shared, your example is helpful, but anything else you can share would be great learning for me.

[01:49:16] 迈克尔：我是来自德克萨斯州达拉斯的迈克尔。我是一名股东。今天得知我的成本基准实际上低于伯克希尔，令我非常激动，所以这真是个好消息。我想我的问题与之前提到的有关，我当时没想到会有那样的问题，所以我会用稍微不同的方式来提问。我感兴趣的是你们高管的激励薪酬，而不是代理声明中列出的那些指定高管。那些我们都能看到。我说的是各业务组负责人——不是代理中列名的——或Markel Ventures各业务负责人的激励薪酬。除了你之前分享的内容之外，你能否谈谈你如何看待他们的激励薪酬？你刚才举的例子非常有帮助，但如果还有其他信息能分享，对我来说将是宝贵的学习。

[01:49:57] Tom Gayner: I’ll make sure I’ll make one comment and then I’ll turn it over to Mike and Jeremy to talk about their, you know, their thoughts on this. So in general, it’s long-term. We want people who are running businesses not to have compensation that’s based on ringing a bell in any one-year thing. You have to spread it out over three or five years. We think that fosters an ownership mentality and we’ve done that consistently for the long-term and we don’t change it with that. Mike and Jeremy, you can add details.

[01:49:57] 汤姆·盖纳：我先简单说一点，然后把问题交给迈克和杰里米，让他们谈谈自己的看法。总的来说，我们的激励是长期性的。我们希望负责经营业务的人，他们的薪酬不应基于某一年“一锤定音”。必须将激励分摊到三年或五年中。我们认为这有助于培养一种主人翁心态，我们长期以来一直如此，并不会对此做出改变。迈克和杰里米，你们可以补充细节。

[01:50:27] Michael Heaton: See if I make you regret handing this question over to me by wading into some tricky, pretty tricky water here. Before turning to the specifics, I think how you come at compensation, whether it’s executive level or whatever else in the company is the most important question Tom talked about long-term. There’s an interesting contrast that has really bubbled up maybe a little less so now, but we heard a lot of it a few years ago. And that was this movement towards including in financial compensation cultural behaviours as I would describe them and I think we thought that was absurd. So the idea of if the company performs financially at this level, you get part of your bonus and if you live the company’s culture really well, then you get this much more, more of a bonus. We don’t believe that if you live the culture 70% or 80% of the way there, you should get 80% of a bonus.

[01:50:27] 迈克尔·希顿：如果我在这棘手的话题上冒险接过这个问题，会不会让你后悔把它交给我？在谈具体细节之前，我认为正如汤姆所说，如何看待薪酬——无论是执行层面，还是公司其他层面——是最重要的问题。有一个有趣的对比，几年前我们听到很多，现在提得少了，那就是将某些文化行为纳入财务激励。我觉得那很荒谬。也就是说，如果公司财务表现达到某个水平，你拿到一部分奖金；如果你很“活”公司文化，再拿更多奖金。我们不认为如果你贯彻了公司文化70%或80%，就应该拿到80%的奖金。

I mean, you should leave the company. You either live the culture or you don’t live the culture. Financial compensation is not a tool to directly influence that type of behaviour.

我是说，你要么融入公司文化，要么不融入。财务激励不是直接影响这类行为的工具。

We want people who are here because they love to be here. They love what they’re building. They love the good that we’re doing. They love the fight. They love to win. They love to compete where the case may be. That’s the people we want, wherever they are in the company. You can’t create that. You can’t really get that out of financial compensation that comes from so many other things in ways. What does financial compensation do? We are a business. We’re a for-profit company. We need to earn good returns. We need to do that to deserve your capital. So we acknowledge that and we say look that’s a part of getting to play the game. We love to play and if we’re earning good returns, we should share that. The shareholders should get some. The employees should get some. And that’s all financial compensation is and it keeps one attuned to whether or not we’re doing justice with the resources we’re provided.

我们希望留下的人，是因为他们热爱待在这里。他们热爱自己所建设的事业，热爱我们正在做的善事，热爱那场奋斗，热爱胜利，热爱竞争。这就是我们想要的人，无论他们在公司什么层面。这种心态无法“制造”，也无法通过财务激励直接获得——它源自于许多其他因素。那财务激励的作用是什么？我们是一家盈利性公司，需要赢得良好的回报，才能配得上你们的资本。因此，我们承认这一点，并表示：这也是参与游戏的一部分。我们热爱这场游戏，如果我们赚得了可观的回报，就应当分享回报。股东应得一部分，员工应得一部分。这就是财务激励的全部意义，它能让我们时刻关注是否妥善利用所获资源。

[01:53:08] Tom Gaynor: Anything you want to add, Jeremy?

[01:53:08] 汤姆·盖纳：杰里米，你有想补充的吗？

[01:53:09] Jeremy Noble: I would just add that the point that was made, I mean our most senior leaders will have meaningful amounts of their total compensation that are tied up in the long-term dynamics. If you were within, let’s say, on the insurance side, you’re going to have a mix of those metrics that are aligned with the sort of Markel Group metrics that you would see in the proxy. You have some that would be specific to the insurance engine, but the most and we incentivize on total performance, total returns, total profitability, not growth and those sorts of things. That’s not sort of an inherent part of it. But to Mike’s point, I mean, we want people that are truly invested in building something that’s remarkable and that they want to be part of what we’re doing here at Markel and that they align well with our culture. Win, win, win that Tom talks about all the time, long-term mentality, thinking about how you treat your employees, how your customers, your shareholders, the commitment to the communities of which we reside, those things create, you know, great people want to be part of that and those will drive value creation over time.

[01:53:09] 杰里米·诺布尔：我想补充一点，正如所提到的，我们的高层领导者总薪酬中会有相当一部分与长期业绩挂钩。比如在保险业务板块，你会看到一系列与代理文件中Markel集团绩效指标一致的考核指标，其中一些指标是保险业务特有的，但我们激励的重点是整体表现、总体回报与总盈利能力，而不是增长率之类的内容。不过，正如迈克所说，我们希望那些真正致力于打造非凡事业、愿意成为Markel一员、并与我们文化高度契合的人加入我们。正如汤姆常说的“胜、胜、胜”理念——长期思维，关注如何对待员工、客户和股东，以及对我们所在社区的承诺——这些因素造就了优秀团队，也会随着时间的推移推动价值创造。

\[01:54:08] Tom Gayner: Thank you. Zone one.

\[01:54:08] 汤姆·盖纳：谢谢。一区。

\[01:54:10] Brendan Wolfe: Hi, I’m Brendan Wolfe. I’m from Austin, TX. Thank you for taking my question. I’m going to bail awkwardly after this question. I got to catch my ride. But I was curious to know, I have an insurance question when you guys are evaluating new prospects and existing insureds, what are some things that have worked well the past three or five years? And what are some things that have not worked as well that you’re thinking about changing or have changed? Thank you.

\[01:54:10] 布兰登·沃尔夫：大家好，我是布兰登·沃尔夫，来自德克萨斯州奥斯汀。感谢你回答我的问题。问完这个问题我就得尴尬地离开，因为我要赶车。但我有一个保险方面的问题：在评估新的潜在客户和现有被保险人时，过去三到五年中有哪些做法效果很好？有哪些做法效果不佳，你们正在考虑改变或已经改变？谢谢。

\[01:54:36] Tom Gayner: Absolutely. Jeremy, want to take it back to that?

\[01:54:36] 汤姆·盖纳：当然。杰里米，你来接着说？

\[01:54:40] Jeremy Noble: Sure. You know, the reality is, is that at any point in time, I talked about a sort of a large portfolio and growth. We’ve talked about acquisitions over a long period of time and there are things that have gone well and there are things that haven’t gone well and we learned from those. So Tom will have the quote and they used to come from Alan Kirshner, that it’s okay to make mistakes, but don’t make the same damn ass mistake. And we live by that. So we recognise that over time. So any number of things go into evaluating prospects. I touched on some of that earlier. We think about sorts of capabilities. We think about people. We think about cultural fit. We think about customer segmentation, geographic segmentation, and product segmentation. All those go into our mindset there.

\[01:54:40] 杰里米·诺布尔：好的。现实是，无论何时，我都在讨论一个大型投资组合和增长。我们长期以来一直在进行收购，有成功的案例，也有不尽人意的，我们都会从中学习。汤姆会引用一句话，最早是艾伦·柯什纳说的：“犯错没关系，但别犯同样的蠢错误。”我们一直奉行这一原则，并随着时间的推移不断认识和改进。在评估潜在客户时，有很多因素要考虑。我之前提到过一些：我们会考量各类能力、团队、文化契合度，以及客户细分、地域细分和产品细分。这些都融入我们的评估思路中。

\[01:55:25] Tom Gayner: Thank you. Zone 2. And I know we’re coming up at noon. We’ll probably stay here till 12:15. Cynthia is giving me the hook here. So we’re going to push just so I can get to say no to her about something and then we’ll hang around for a little bit.

\[01:55:25] 汤姆·盖纳：谢谢。二区。现在接近中午，我们可能会待到12:15。辛西娅在那边准备提示我结束，所以我们会稍微拖一下时间，好让我有机会婉拒她的某个提议，然后我们再多待一会儿。

\[01:55:41] Mark Hammonds: Yeah. Mark Hammonds from London. Firstly, thank you for your generosity in hosting this event and in the annual report last year you talked about carrying out a review of your loss reserves because you found them to be deficient in some areas. Just wondered if you could talk more about what the process looked like and what you learned from it. Thank you.

\[01:55:41] 马克·哈蒙兹：大家好，我是来自伦敦的马克·哈蒙兹。首先，感谢你们慷慨举办这次活动。在去年的年报中，你们提到对赔付准备金进行了审查，因为发现某些方面存在不足。想请你详细聊聊这个过程是怎样进行的，以及你们从中学到了什么。谢谢。

\[01:56:02] Tom Gayner: Jeremy?

\[01:56:02] 汤姆·盖纳：杰里米？

\[01:56:02] Jeremy Noble: Yeah, sure. So we’ve been highlighting for a couple of years and again, this wasn’t really necessarily unique to Markel. We were seeing, you know, actual loss experience above what we expected within our actual models, particularly the long tail lines, casualty, and professional liability. And we were reacting to that along the way. I was convinced we needed to not get out of 2023 without taking a much more extensive look at our reserves. So we got our best leaders across underwriting and claims and actuarial. We supplemented those efforts with third-party industry experts and industry data and we looked at in excess of I think \$4 billion of reserves in our US speciality, casualty, and professional lines and we just unpacked a lot of what we were seeing from trends. So that would be it underlying sort of mix of business. If we were thinking about construction, you know looking at the contractor’s book, how do we split the construction defect from the non-construction defect, how do we think about project work or practise work just taking really data-driven insight-led initiative to understand what we were seeing over the last couple of years.

\[01:56:02] 杰里米·诺布尔：好的。我们已经强调了几年了，而且这并非Markel独有的问题。我们发现实际损失经验高于模型预期，尤其是在长尾业务——损害赔偿和专业责任险方面，我们一路在进行调整。我坚信，不能在2023年结束前不对准备金做一次更全面的审查。于是我们召集了承保、理赔和精算的顶尖负责人，并邀请第三方行业专家和利用行业数据，对美国专业险、损害赔偿和专业责任险中超过40亿美元的准备金进行了详细拆解和趋势分析。比如在建筑险方面，我们会拆分建筑缺陷与非建筑缺陷，分析项目险与业务实践险，仅凭数据洞察来了解过去几年的表现。

So we took pretty significant action in the portfolio on those reserves and commented on that at year-end as part of our 2023 results and then off the back of that, we started to modify and take underwriting action to drive prospective portfolio health considerations. So talked about that as far as even in the first quarter and we can see it in the lines of business. So we’re a bit more challenged. We’re taking action and we’re also contracting those total writings and in the areas of the portfolio, they’re performing really well. We’re meaningfully growing and we see a lot of opportunities across a lot of products in that space. And that was really the tail of the first quarter. I think that’s going to be the tail over the course of the year. So I feel much better positioned about where we are now as we move forward.

在此基础上，我们对投资组合中的准备金采取了重大调整，并在年终2023年财报中进行了说明。随后，我们开始在承保层面做出变革，以促进未来投资组合的健康发展。我们在第一季度就已提及，并能在各业务线看到效果。目前面临一些挑战，但我们正采取行动，并在收缩部分业务投保规模的同时，在表现良好的领域大幅增长，看到该领域众多产品的机会。这些措施在第一季度末生效，并将在全年持续发挥作用。我对当前的定位感到更有信心。

\[01:58:00] Tom Gayner: Let me add to that. So yeah, it was a tough year last year and Jeremy spoke the definition about some things we did. But here’s what I am proud of and here’s what I think you as fellow shareholders and partners should take comfort in even with those actions and scrub it extra hard and facing some challenges we still developed with redundancy last year, full calendar year, fourth quarter we didn’t but for the full year we did. So I think that speaks to the culture and the idea of operating with a margin of safety such that even if you get surprised and you’re disappointed with stuff you did put up enough reserves on day one that you had the ability to absorb that and answer the bell for the next round of the fight so that I’m very proud of. Zone 1.

\[01:58:00] 汤姆·盖纳：让我补充一点。去年确实很艰难，杰里米已经介绍了我们采取的一些措施。但我引以为豪的是，即便在这些严格审视和面对挑战时，我们依然在去年全年实现了盈利盈余——除了第四季度略显波动，全年来看我们仍保持了盈余。这充分体现了我们的文化：以安全边际来运营，即使遭遇意外或出现失望，也在第一天就预留了足够准备金，从而有能力吸收冲击，并为下一轮战斗做好准备——这一点让我非常自豪。一区。

\[01:58:46] Neil Kumar: Hi, my name is Neil Kumar. I am a private investor and student in Boston. I first want to say thank you for hosting this event. It’s my first time in Omaha and my first time at a Markel event. I’ve enjoyed it so much. My question is related to AI. Do you have any plans or have already implemented the use of AI in your work?

\[01:58:46] 尼尔·库玛：大家好，我叫尼尔·库玛，是一名在波士顿的个人投资者和学生。首先感谢你们举办这次活动。这是我第一次来奥马哈，也是第一次参加Markel的活动，我非常享受这次体验。我的问题与人工智能有关：你们是否有计划或已经在工作中应用人工智能？

\[01:59:07] Tom Gayner: The question is about AI. AI is pervasive. The simple fact of the matter is like every technology, we would be idiotic not to embrace it and understand that the genie is out of the bottle, as Buffett said, and it’s going to affect business. We are already using it in bits and pieces and we will continue to be receptive, open-minded, and curious to try to figure out how to use it. I would say that we have a lot of veteran investors and veteran observers of life around here. So AI has become almost a frenzied word. Many years ago in the late 90s when the .com 1.0 came around in the distorted investment markets. Sort of AI is real, but the sensation of it, AI may have a bit of a fever pitch to it. And the way I would illustrate this is that so a couple weeks ago, when the Masters Tournament was on TV, our four-year-old grandson was at our home at that point and we had the Masters on and you know the Masters has a very limited number of commercials, but IBM’s one of the sponsors and all those commercials were about AI because that’s just the fever pitch thing that’s going. So my grandson was playing with some toys and whatnot, and at one point he goes AI, AI, AI. So it’s real. And I get it. And then we will embrace it and make sure that we’re not left behind on this. But also there are different levels of marketing that are not quite as real as we have seen before. Thank you. Zone 2.

\[01:59:07] 汤姆·盖纳：问题是关于人工智能的。人工智能已经无处不在。事实很简单，就像其它技术一样，如果我们不拥抱它、理解正如巴菲特所说，“魔鬼已经脱瓶”，并且它将影响商业，那才真是愚蠢。我们已经在零星地使用人工智能，并将继续保持开放、好奇，努力探索如何应用它。我想说，我们这里有很多经验丰富的投资者和生活观察者。因此，“人工智能”这个词几乎已经成为一个狂热的时尚。回想很多年前90年代末、.com 1.0时期的投资市场，那时AI确实存在，但对它的狂热可能更像是一种热潮。我举个例子：几周前大师赛在电视上播放，我们四岁的孙子正在家里看比赛。大师赛的广告非常少，但IBM是一大赞助商，所有广告都在谈AI，因为这是当下的热点。所以我的孙子一边玩玩具，一边不断说“AI，AI，AI”。这说明AI是真实的，我也理解这一点。我们会拥抱它，确保不被落下。但市场宣传也有不同层次，有些并不像过去那样真实。谢谢。二区。

\[02:00:48] Ira Holtzman: Hi, my name is Ira Holtzman from Glenview, IL. I became a shareholder after I attended the crunch last year, for the first time.

\[02:00:48] 艾拉·霍尔茨曼：大家好，我是来自伊利诺伊州格伦维尤的艾拉·霍尔茨曼。去年参加“Crunch”活动后，我首次成为贵公司的股东。

\[02:00:55] Tom Gayner: And you’re up 17% so far. Not that I’m counting, but go ahead.

\[02:00:55] 汤姆·盖纳：到目前为止你已经上涨了17%。我可不是在打分，只是说说而已。请继续。

\[02:00:57] Ira Holtzman: I keep. I keep adding along the way by the way. My question relates to Tesla Insurance. I have a Tesla and I have Tesla insurance and I saw that it’s underwritten by State National. So I have a question and a comment. One is how is that going and is that something that you’re looking at expanding maybe to others, I don’t know if other auto companies are going to want to offer that or have it underwritten. Am I correct in my assumption?

\[02:00:57] 艾拉·霍尔茨曼：对了，我一直在陆续增持。我的问题与特斯拉保险有关。我有一辆特斯拉，也购买了特斯拉保险，并看到该保险是由State National承保的。所以我有一个问题和一个想法。第一是：这项业务进行得如何？你们是否考虑将其扩展到其他品牌？我不确定其他汽车公司会不会想提供这种保险或寻找承保方。我的理解是否正确？

\[02:01:27] Tom Gayner: Yeah, thank you. I’ll let everybody speak to this in just a moment. But I do want to make the point. When I talked about us going from a national company to an international company, but probably not going to an intergalactic company. We’re not doing the intergalactic work that Mr. Musk is doing. So good luck to him. But I wanted to frame it at that point. Secondly, it actually highlights something very important that is largely done through the insurance services products and services that we offer. So we facilitated his ability to provide that form of insurance not by using our own balance sheet, but by using our own skills and charging the fees for service in order to enable that. And with that, let me turn it over to Jim if he wants to say anything about it.

\[02:01:27] 汤姆·盖纳：是的，谢谢。我稍后让大家来谈这个问题。但我想强调一点：当我说我们从一家国内公司走向国际公司时，并不是要变成一家“星际公司”。我们不做马斯克先生那种星际探索的业务，祝他好运。但我想借此说明一个问题。第二点，这实际上凸显了我们通过保险服务产品所提供的重要能力。我们帮助特斯拉提供这类保险，并不是动用自有资产负债表来承保，而是凭借自身专业技能，收取服务费来实现这项业务。接下来，我把话题交给Jim，让他分享一些看法。

\[02:02:09] Jeremy Noble: Yeah. I mean, for the most part, I’m not going to comment on specific customers or clients within Markel, but it is reported that State National has a relationship with Tesla. Overall, what I would say is the State National and that service that Tom was alluding to is going extremely well. And that is the nature of State National’s business. They efficiently help risk, match risk and capital and they don’t take underwriting risk. So it’s not an underwriting shop, it’s actually a credit risk management shop and over 40 years we’ve built the leading entity in that space. But that business model is performing extremely, extremely well.

\[02:02:09] 杰里米·诺布尔：好的。大体上，我不会对Markel的具体客户或案例发表评论，但据报道State National与特斯拉有合作关系。总体而言，我可以说Tom提到的State National及其服务进展非常顺利。这正是State National业务的本质：他们高效地帮助配置风险和资本，并不承担承保风险。因此，这不是一家承保机构，而是信用风险管理机构。四十多年来，我们已将其打造成为该领域的领先实体，而这一商业模式表现极为出色。

\[02:02:49] Andrew Crowley: And I’ll add one thing from ventures, just because we are a little intergalactic, I guess, in the sense that so you’ve got Buckner is a heavy lift crane provider and actually leases out cranes for those that are involved in space exploration. So we do have a business that’s servicing that. We also have Weldship which leases out tube trailers for speciality and industrial gases and we lease out helium and other trailers to those that are focused in the same area. So we have found a way to make money on it along the way without having to go to outer space ourselves.

\[02:02:49] 安德鲁·克劳利：我想补充一点关于Ventures业务的内容，虽然我们并不真正“上天入地”，但有些业务确实有些“星际”意味。比如Buckner是一家重型起重机供应商，实际上它将起重机租赁给参与太空探索的用户，所以我们确实在为此类业务提供支持。我们还有Weldship，租赁特殊和工业气体用的管式拖车，并将氦气等拖车租赁给专注该领域的客户。这样，我们在不亲自进入太空的情况下，也找到了一种盈利方式。

\[02:03:20] Tom Gayner: And I think we have one other business that does some business with Tesla, but we’re current on all things, all accounts. Zone 1.

\[02:03:20] 汤姆·盖纳：我想我们还有另一项业务也与特斯拉有合作，但在所有方面和所有账目上我们都保持最新。一区。

\[02:03:28] Matthew Vogel: Hi, I’m Matthew Vogel, a teenager from Las Vegas. So I want to ask you in your letters, you’ve always stressed the importance of businesses that have attractive returns on capital with reinvestment opportunities or capital discipline. So when the reinvestment incrementally is into projects outside of the core high-return business like Alphabet, how do you evaluate that business’s prospects?

\[02:03:28] 马修·沃格尔：你好，我是来自拉斯维加斯的青少年马修·沃格尔。在你的信中，你一直强调那些具有吸引人的资本回报率并具备再投资机会或资本纪律的企业的重要性。那么，当额外的再投资流向核心高回报业务之外的项目时，比如在谷歌（Alphabet）这样的公司，你如何评估这些业务的前景？

\[02:03:49] Tom Gayner: OK, tell me that again. I’m sorry you spoke a little quickly. I got that. You were a teenage boy from Las Vegas, and I really couldn’t connect after that. I got distracted.

\[02:03:49] 汤姆·盖纳：好，再跟我说一遍。抱歉，你刚才说得有点快。我记得你是来自拉斯维加斯的青少年，但之后我有点分心，没能听清。

\[02:04:02] Matthew Vogel: I get it. So I was saying in your letters you’ve always said the importance of returns on capital and business and having reinvestment opportunities. So when you have a business where the incremental reinvestment is to projects outside of the core high-return business like in Google or Alphabet, how do you evaluate that business’s prospects?

\[02:04:02] 马修·沃格尔：我明白了。我想说的是，在你的信中，你一直强调资本回报和业务再投资机会的重要性。那么，当业务将增量再投资投入到核心高回报业务之外的项目时，比如谷歌（Alphabet）这样的公司，你如何评估这些新业务的前景？

\[02:04:20] Tom Gayner: With most businesses, including Google that you mentioned and as they move into things that are different than what they did do, you have to trust the management. And how do you come to trust the management? Well, you look at what they’ve already done over a longer period of time. There’s a famous Virginian named Patrick Henry who among the things he said is, I know of no way to judge the future but by the past. So even if there’s a new activity, the people who are doing the new activity do have some track record. And they do have an intellectual case to make for why it is that they’re doing what they’re doing. So that’s some of what we do every day is to think about that, see opportunities, and just try to be thoughtful. And again, you’re never going to bat 100%, but you just try to exercise your own muscles of logic and reasonability and common sense and track record to draw reasonable conclusions about what is yet to be. Thank you. Zone 2.

\[02:04:20] 汤姆·盖纳：对于大多数企业，包括你提到的谷歌，当它们进军与以往不同的领域时，就必须信任管理层。那么，怎样才能信任管理层呢？你要观察他们在更长一段时间内已经取得的成就。有位著名的弗吉尼亚人帕特里克·亨利曾说：“我不知道有什么办法可以评判未来，除了通过过去。”因此，即便是新的业务活动，开展这些活动的人也会有一定的业绩记录，并能以理性论证说明自己为何这样做。这也是我们每天要做的一部分工作：思考这些问题，发现机会，并试图以审慎的态度行事。当然，你不可能做到百分之百正确，但你只需运用自己的逻辑、理性、常识和业绩记录来对未来做出合理的判断即可。谢谢。二区。

\[02:05:23] Roland: Hi, good afternoon. I’m Roland. I’m from Vancouver and I’m here as a potential investor. I’d like to ask a question that relates to how you manage people within Markel Group, specifically, when we had a period like the last few years when the combined ratio has been rising and then you mentioned that, you know, you have identified some of those areas that the mistakes were being made. So how did you kind of manage the situations whereby you hold the team accountable for those decisions versus having to encourage them to take on calculated risk when necessary? How do you balance between taking a long-term view on decision making versus you know short-term kind of mistakes being made? Yeah. Thank you.

\[02:05:23] 罗兰：大家下午好。我是罗兰，来自温哥华，以潜在投资者身份来此。我想问一个问题，关于你们如何管理Markel集团内部人员。具体来说，过去几年合并赔付率有所上升，你们也提到已经识别出一些出现错误的方面。那么，在这种情况下，你们如何在追究团队决策责任与必要时鼓励他们承担经过计算的风险之间进行权衡？在做决策时，如何平衡长期视角和短期失误？谢谢。

\[02:06:08] Tom Gayner: Thank you. Well, to repeat the question as best I can. The gist of it is how we balance between perhaps some short-term negative results and not over-penalising somebody who did that for the possible returns in the future. So it is a balancing process and the short answer to how do we balance that is imperfectly. People who sometimes are, yeah, unhappy about the way in which we would balance that. But I know exactly what you’re saying and what it means is there are numbers on a piece of paper. And if you look at numbers on a piece of paper and you stop there, you are only doing half your work. They need to do that work first, but then you need to pick your head up. And say, why did those numbers play out that way? Is it likely that will continue to be the case next year, two years, three years, five years and or is there some reason why it’s likely to be different?

\[02:06:08] 汤姆·盖纳：谢谢。让我尽可能复述一下问题要点：关键在于，我们如何在面对短期不利结果时，既不过度惩罚为了未来潜在回报而做出决策的人，也能保持激励。这是一个平衡过程，简短回答是——我们并不完美。有人有时会对我们的平衡方式不满，但我完全理解你的意思：报表上的数字只是第一步。如果你只停留在数字层面，就只完成了一半工作。你需要先做数据分析，然后抬起头来问：这些数字为何会如此呈现？明年、两年、三年或五年后，这种情况是否仍会持续？或者有什么因素可能使其不同？

I’ll tell one story. I know we’re in the lightning round of the last couple of minutes, but it relates perhaps to the difficulties we had with the intellectual property book of business and I was very frustrated and very disappointed with how that played. And I have told this story about a bazillion times around the halls of Markel to illustrate some of the things that were frustrating to me about that and what we need to focus on going forward. And that I was travelling somewhere randomly and I met someone randomly and we’re just having a conversation. This is very turns out that was a very successful businessman. He’s from Brazil and chatted. He had recently bought his nine-year-old daughter a new horse and turns out he had ensured that with Markel. And I said to our people, coming back to tell the story, I love that form of insurance as straight as much of that as we possibly can. Because if you think about it, that 9-year-old girl didn’t want anything bad to happen to that horse. That dad didn’t want anything bad to happen to that horse. That horse did not want anything bad to happen to the horse. And we, as the insurer didn’t want anything bad to happen. We are perfectly aligned.

我讲一个故事。虽然只剩几分钟了，但这或许跟我们在知识产权业务上的困难有关，当时我非常沮丧和失望。我曾在Markel的走廊里无数次讲述这个故事，来说明当时令我困扰的事，以及我们今后必须关注的要点。有一次我在某地旅行，偶遇一位非常成功的巴西企业家，我们聊天时得知，他给九岁的女儿买了一匹新马，并通过Markel投保。我后来告诉团队，我希望尽可能多地推广这种保险形态。想想看，那个九岁女孩不希望她的马遭遇不测；她的父亲也不希望；那匹马自身也没有问题出现；我们作为保险人，也不希望发生任何不幸——我们的利益完全一致。

So if I saw somebody writing that kind of business and they had a bad result but those were the dynamics, I would say this is a soluble problem. We can figure this out. It’s going to be okay. So I’ve used my judgement to come to that point of view. If I look at something and the facts don’t line up that way. And by the way, I wish we could sell 100% of our insurance with those kinds of alignments. There’s not enough insurance risk in the world that meets that test, but you have to use your judgment to think about the things that you did do and where the alignments were and what the motivations were to see if it seems reasonable and judge accordingly. It’s an imperfect art, but that again is what we do every day. I think we have time for two more questions, so one and two. Last two.

因此，如果我看到有人承保这类业务，即便出现了不利结果，但考虑到双方利益一致，我会说这是一个可以解决的问题，我们能够找到办法，一切会好起来。所以我凭直觉得出了这一观点。但如果事实并不如此，即便我希望能将100%的业务都做成这种利益一致的模式，世界上符合此条件的保险风险毕竟有限，你仍需运用判断力，评估自己所做之事、利益是否一致、动机为何，判断是否合理并据此裁决。这是一门不完美的艺术，但这正是我们每天所做的工作。我想我们还有时间回答最后两个问题。一区。

[02:09:01] Arv: Hello, Mr Gaynor I am Arv. I’m an 18-year-old shareholder from Connecticut and my question is in light of poor Charlie’s Almanack being the only book sold at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this year, what are your favourite mental models and how do you apply them within Markel or through running the investment portfolio?

[02:09:01] 阿尔夫：你好，盖纳先生。我是阿尔夫，一名来自康涅狄格州的18岁股东。我的问题是，在今年伯克希尔哈撒韦年会上唯一出售的书是《穷查理宝典》的背景下，您最喜欢的心智模型有哪些？您是如何在Markel或在投资组合管理中应用这些模型的？

[02:09:19] Tom Gayner: Well, thank you. And the list of books that we talked about and we’ll be having some at the Markel broader set and I’m a constant reader, if you ever in my office, all you will see are books overflowing. If you come to my home, you’ll see books, books, books, books. So I share that passion with Charlie and I’ll tell two stories about sort of the interaction. I was lucky enough to have with Charlie about books and the list is endless. So one time I was very fortunate. I was lucky enough to be having dinner with him and of course, one of the topics you would always talk about with Charlie would be books. And so there was a book I had read recently that I was deeply impressed with and that’s sort of what I brought to the table, and the book was How Genghis Khan Invented the Modern World. So, Genghis Khan, you know, he gets a bad wrap. He did some things very, very well. And this book sort of was about the positive things that Genghis Khan had done. So Charlie sort of, in his own way with his arms like that said that book is so good. I don’t even know if it’s true. He did not like to be one up on books that were dangerously close. The other book story I’ll tell is about Charlie and this relates to Susan and her study of physics and my great friend, Chris Davis. There was a book that Susan recently gave Chris and he told him about a book that Charlie had given him at one point in time. He described it to Chris, and he says I hope you like this book if you don’t give it to a smarter friend. So all I can tell you is read, read, read, read and any name or two that I would give you would be an unnecessary truncation. Keep going. Zone two, last question. Thank you.

[02:09:19] 汤姆·盖纳：谢谢你。关于我们谈论过的书单，有些也将在Markel的更广泛推荐中出现。我是一个持续阅读者，如果你到我办公室看看，满眼都是书；到我家里，更是书、书、书、书。所以我和查理在这方面有着共同的热情。我讲两个关于我与查理之间有关书籍的小故事，书单真是数不胜数。有一次我非常幸运，能与他共进晚餐，当然其中一个总会聊到的话题就是书。我带去的话题是一本我最近读过、印象非常深刻的书，叫《成吉思汗与现代世界的诞生》。成吉思汗——你知道的，他的名声可能有些争议，但他确实做成了很多事。这本书讲述了他所做的积极贡献。查理用他特有的方式抬着手臂说：“这本书太好了，我甚至不知道它是不是真的。”他不喜欢在书籍上被别人抢了风头，哪怕只是“险胜”。另一个关于书的故事还是查理的，跟苏珊学习物理以及我好友克里斯·戴维斯有关。苏珊最近送克里斯一本书，他提到查理曾经送过他一本书，并这样形容那本书：“我希望你喜欢这本书，如果你不喜欢，把它送给一个比你更聪明的朋友。”所以我唯一想说的是：读书，读书，读书，再读书！如果我只推荐一两本书，那只会是不必要的限制。继续前进吧。二区，最后一个问题。谢谢。

“Hello, Mr. Gaynor. I am Arv. I'm an 18-year-old shareholder from Connecticut.

你好，Gaynor先生。我是Arv，一名来自康涅狄格州的18岁股东。

And my question is, in light of Poor Charlie's Almanac being the only book sold at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting this year, what are your favorite mental models and how do you apply them within Markel or through running the investment portfolio?

我的问题是，鉴于《穷查理宝典》是今年伯克希尔哈撒韦年会唯一售卖的书籍，您最喜欢哪些思维模型？您如何在Markel公司或投资组合管理中运用这些模型？

Well, thank you. And the list of books that we talk about and we'll be having some at the Markel reading broader set. And I'm a constant reader.

谢谢你的问题。我们谈论过的书单，其中一些也会出现在Markel的阅读清单中。我是一个持续不断地阅读的人。

If you ever were in my office, all you will see are books overflowing. If you go to my home, you'll see books, books, books, books, books. So I share that passion with Charlie, and I'll tell two stories about sort of an interaction I was lucky enough to have with Charlie about books.

如果你来过我的办公室，你会看到书堆得满满当当。到我家里去，也到处都是书。所以我和查理一样有这种热情。我来讲两个我有幸与查理关于书本互动的小故事。

And the list is endless. So one time, I was very fortunate, I was lucky enough to be having dinner with him. And of course, one of the topics you would always talk about with Charlie would be books.”

这样的书单是无穷无尽的。有一次，我非常幸运，有机会与他共进晚餐。当然，与查理交谈的主题之一总是离不开书籍。”

“And so there was a book I had read recently that I was deeply impressed with, and that's sort of what I brought to the table. And the book was *How Genghis Khan Invented the Modern World*. So Genghis Khan, you know, he gets a bad rap.

那时我刚读完一本让我印象极深的书，于是就拿出来和他讨论。这本书叫《成吉思汗与今日世界的缔造》。你知道，成吉思汗名声不太好。

He did some things very, very well. And this book sort of was about the positive things that Genghis Khan had done. So Charlie sort of in his own way, with his arms like that, he said, that book is so good, I don't even know if it's true.

但他确实做过一些非常出色的事情。这本书讲述了成吉思汗所做的一些积极贡献。查理用他惯有的方式抬起手臂说：“这本书太好了，我都怀疑它是不是真的。”

He did not like to be one-upped on books, and that was dangerously close. The other book story I'll tell about Charlie, and this relates to Susan and her study of physics, and my great friend Chris Davis. There was a book that Susan recently gave Chris, and he told him about a book that Charlie had given him at one point in time, and he had scribed it to Chris.”

他不喜欢在读书方面被比下去，而那次几乎接近了。关于查理的另一个书本故事，和Susan学习物理有关，也和我亲密的朋友Chris Davis有关。有一本书是Susan最近送给Chris的，而Chris也告诉了我当年查理送他的一本书，还在书上题了字。

“He says, I hope you like this book. If you don't, give it to a smarter friend. So all I can tell you is read, read, read, read, read, and any name or two that I would give you would be an unnecessary truncation.

查理写道：“我希望你喜欢这本书，如果你不喜欢，那就送给你更聪明的朋友。”所以我唯一能告诉你的建议就是：读书，读书，再读书，我若给你列举一两本书名，反而是对浩瀚书海的无谓简化。

Keep going. Zone 2, last question. Thank you.

我们继续。第二区，最后一个问题。谢谢。

Tom Seymour, West Hartford, Connecticut, and a shareholder. Ajit yesterday had some, I thought, interesting comments about cyber insurance. And I got the sense that you guys actually write cyber insurance.

我是Tom Seymour，来自康涅狄格州西哈特福德，是一名股东。Ajit昨天对网络保险发表了一些有趣的看法。我感觉你们确实承保网络保险。

So how much cyber insurance do you write? And if you do write cyber insurance, has Ajit's comments made you rethink whether you should write it?

那么你们承保多少网络保险？Ajit的评论是否让你重新思考你们是否应该承保网络保险？

Well, you should always listen to Ajit. He'd be idiotic not to. But we do write cyber insurance, and we do it differently than the way Ajit would, and we have a different set of opportunities in front of us than what Ajit would do.”

当然，你永远应该听Ajit的意见，不听他的才是愚蠢的。但我们确实承保网络保险，而且我们做法与Ajit不同，我们面临的机会也不同于他所做的。

“Ajit would write very big ticket, big limit gross aggregate stuff, and he would be willing to write it or not write it. That's one of the fundamental positions he has in the world that he does spectacularly well, and that's why you should listen to him. At our level, where we're writing primary insurance, first thing you should know is we write way, way, way smaller limits.

Ajit所承保的是高额、大限额、整体累计的风险，他可能愿意承保，也可能不承保。这是他在其领域表现极其出色的根本立场，也正因如此我们应听从他。而我们做的是基础保险，首先你要知道的是我们的承保限额要小得多。

So the bite size of the cyber risk we take is way smaller. Now, that should only give you partial comfort because one of the points that he was trying to make was that those little bitty bits can aggregate into a big number, and we're aware of that and manage that as tightly and as best as we know how through smaller limits and a big spread.

因此我们承担的网络风险份额要小很多。但这只能带来部分安心，因为Ajit所指出的关键在于，即使是微小的风险点也可能汇聚成大额损失。我们对此有清醒认识，并通过小限额和广泛分散进行尽可能严密的管理。

The second thing is cyber insurance is somewhat akin to business interruption where, you know, something can happen. Look at the bridge in Baltimore, where we will have exposure. As we joke these days, people call me, you said, you get anything on that bridge in Baltimore? My answer is, anything you see on TV, we probably have some of.”

第二点是，网络保险在某种程度上类似营业中断险——你永远不知道会发生什么。看看巴尔的摩的那座桥，我们确实有相关风险敞口。现在我们开玩笑说，有人打电话问我：“你们对巴尔的摩那座桥有没有承保？”我的回答是：只要你在电视上看到的，我们大概都有点涉及。

“So yes, now one of the kinds of exposures that we would have because of that would be business interruption, that we sold to various businesses that are interrupted in Baltimore on account of it. And so we are not rookies at thinking about what aggregations and cross-correlations would do, and then that's the sort of day-to-day discipline and work that we monitor and try to keep track of. And we have decades of history which would indicate that we're not perfect, but we get the gist of it right, so I hope you take some comfort in that.

因此我们其中一个风险敞口是因这类事件导致的营业中断险，我们确实向受巴尔的摩事故影响的企业销售了此类产品。我们并不是处理聚合风险或交叉关联风险的新手。这是我们每天监控和努力跟踪的工作。我们有数十年的历史，这证明我们虽然不完美，但大致上把握得还算准确，希望这能让你安心一些。

Third thing is that cyber is an insurance that's not just, hey, we had a cyber event, here's your money. Cyber is one of those beautiful hybrid products, and it has some similarities to the story I told about the Brazilian horse. You're not just replacing money when you buy cyber insurance from us.”

第三点，网络保险不是那种“发生了事故，就赔钱”那么简单的保险。它是一种很美妙的混合型产品，有点像我讲过的巴西赛马的故事。当你从我们这里购买网络保险时，你不仅仅是获得金钱赔偿。

“What you're buying is expertise. Hey, if you want to not have a cyber problem, here's some of the good housekeeping seal of purple things you should do to minimize your cyber risk. And if you do, we have the experts and the panel of experts in the SWAT team who can help you recover and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

你买到的是专业服务。嘿，如果你不想遇上网络问题，那就遵循我们提出的一些高标准规范，最大限度减少网络风险。如果真的出了问题，我们有专家团队，有像特种小组那样的专家，可以帮助你恢复，把破碎的局面重新拼合起来。

So it is both an insurance coverage, but it is also a service and a product in and of itself where just like lawyers and IT consultants and people would be involved, cybersecurity experts, that's correct. We have a practice that's involved in trying to provide a helpful product and service to our customers to serve them, to make them better off, and have our customer in Des Moines, Iowa, and New York City, and Seattle, and London, and Munich benefit from the expertise that we aggregate by virtue of doing it in all these different places, all these different kinds of businesses.

因此这既是一种保险责任保障，也是一种自身就具备服务性质的产品，就像律师、IT顾问以及网络安全专家介入那样。没错，我们有一套完整的运营机制，致力于为客户提供有用的产品和服务，帮助他们变得更强、更安全。我们在爱荷华州得梅因、纽约、西雅图、伦敦、慕尼黑的客户，因我们积累的广泛经验而获益。

So I'll close this gathering about Markel by citing a commercial of another insurance company.”

那我将引用另一家保险公司的广告语来结束这场关于Markel的分享。

“The Farmers Insurance Campaign, where the guy says, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two, that's a really good campaign, and a really good illustration of something that we get to do because we're in the game.

“农民保险”的广告语中有句话，“我们懂一些，是因为我们见过一些。”这是一条很棒的广告，也很好地诠释了我们因为身处其中而积累的经验。

So Ajit responds to big things, and he does it spectacularly well, but it's a different thing than what it is that we do, and the way in which we know a thing or two is that we do a thing or two, and we learn by doing, and we're there to help our clients and serve them, which is ultimately how we keep in business.

Ajit应对的是大事，他做得极其出色；而我们做的是另一种工作，我们之所以“懂一些”，是因为我们“亲身去做过一些”。我们通过实践学习，在一线帮助客户、服务客户，这才是我们持续经营的根本之道。

With that, we'll close.

就此结束。

I want to thank you all for coming. Thank you for the questions.

感谢大家到来，感谢你们提出的问题。

Thank you for the support.

感谢你们的支持。

We'll see you either in Richmond, Virginia, on May 22nd or here next year. Thank you.”

我们5月22日在弗吉尼亚州里士满，或明年在这里再见。谢谢大家。”