With some financial help from the "Warren Buffet of Canada" (a misnomer, Mr. Watsa held Blackberry and held it waaay too long).
First up, some of the backgound. It was almost a decade ago that David Sokol broke Warren's heart by front-running the Lubrizol acquisition. He purchased something like $10 million of the stock and then recommended Berkshire buy the company.
It made no sense, even if he doubled his money it was peanuts compared to what he stood to gain from operating MidAmerican Energy—an Iowa utility with what was at the time the largest fleet of wind turbines in the U.S.—for Berkshire ($24-25 mil/year).
As the facts came out it made even less sense. His stake was purchased for $104 and BRK bought Lubrizol for $135.
One of the dumbest trades in history.
Buffett was all set to basically recreate Enron, pipelines and gas and wind but within Berkshire and on the up-and-up, and eventually hand the reins of the entire Berkshire operation over to Sokol and Ajit Jain running the insurance and reinsurance ops.
Anyhoo, Sokol left in disgrace, took an interest in Middleburg Financial which looked as though it might be his vehicle to regain some cred, made some money off that and moved on to Hong Kong based shipping company, Seaspan.
Some of our posts along the way:
March 2011
Middleburg Financial Approaching Escape Velocity on Word Sokol Was Buying Within the Last Two Weeks (MBRG; BRK.A)
January 2018
Former Buffett Heir Apparent David Sokol Resurfaces In the Shipping Business
June 2018
Shipping: Canadian Fund Fairfax Commits to New $500 Million Investment in David Sokol's Seaspan
April 2019
Former Buffett Heir Apparent David Sokol Gets Into LNG With COSCO and Singapore's Swiber (SSW)
November 2019
Shipping: Former Buffett Heir Apparent Increases Seaspan's Fleet To Almost One Million TEUs (SSW)
There are quite a few more, use the search blog box if interested
And where, patient reader asks, where is this ramble going?
Well staying in November 2019 Sokol made a mini-Berkshire move:
Seaspan Announces Proposed Holding Company Reorganization Forming Atlas Corp., a Leading Global Asset Manager and Enters into Agreement to Acquire APR Energy in $750 Million Transaction
This post is getting too long as it is so we'll stop there and come back to Sokol and two very tough industries tomorrow.
And Middleburg?
April 1, 2017
Middleburg Financial Corp. has merged with Access National Corp.
DPP acted as financial advisor to Mr. David Sokol, Middleburg’s largest
shareholder (approximately 30%) and assisted in the negotiations on his
behalf....
