Subject: Re: BRO & AJG

I think a lot of the newly issued shares have been used for acquisitions -- AJG has a bit of an empire building complex (though in fairness some of the middle market insurance brokers were tempting targets). About a year ago AJG issued a bunch of shares (when they were trading just under $300/share) for the AssuredPartners acquisition (~$13.5B). As a casual observer I haven't been particularly impressed thus far: it looks like they overpaid (though partly in overvalued AJG shares), overpromised on synergies (par for the course), and confused a lot of AP employees, but it's early days yet and may yet sort itself out.