Great point, Tex. One thing I’d add, though, is that Warren paid for the Gen Re transaction with arguably THE most overvalued currency in Berkshire’s history. Berkshire was trading at just under 3x book value. He was paying with 70 cent dollars. I remember those days. Berkshire may have been the original meme stock. Warren was undoubtedly looking for ways to monetize that historic, extraordinary valuation, but realistically he couldn’t just sell his own shares.

Gen Re certainly came with far more problems than anyone expected, absolutely, and Buffett was refreshingly candid about that for several years.

But Berkshire also acquired roughly $15 billion of float and approximately $25 billion of invested assets.

Today, Gen Re is a consistently profitable, disciplined reinsurer that contributes meaningfully to Berkshire’s underwriting earnings and, just as importantly maybe more importantly , to our enormous pool of treasured insurance float. Buffett himself has more recently referred to Gen Re as “a fine insurance operation that we prize.”

So while the acquisition clearly fell well short of Warren’s original expectations, I think the purchase looks a little different when viewed through the lens of the insurance franchise Berkshire ultimately built—rather than solely through the lens of the Berkshire shares issued in 1998. Insurance has always been the engine that powers Berkshire’s capital allocation model, and Gen Re remains an important part of that engine.