The combined company can eliminate 25 percent of duplicated cost,

The impressive part was that there was a clear message of urgency, a clear admission that they've lost their leadership status. It was good to hear that they recognize that they have a problem.

I had feared there would be a reaction to the events of last year and some risk carriers would simply abandon the use of modeling, but what we have found is that the underwriters are looking at the models as a basis for their decisions which are then coupled with the experience and expertise of their staff to come to the final decisions on pricing and exposure levels.

They were not going to settle one thing, and now they have a global settlement.

It's such a diversified company that a single business or a single product doesn't represent a meaningful percentage of the company's total revenues.

It's a disaster for Merck, coming at the worst time.

They have been down so much, so they are kind of rebounding.

The Texas jury (verdict) may have triggered a new strategy, which is, let's settle the most obvious cases because you don't want to keep losing case after case because that feeds into itself.

We are increasing our view of the likelihood of severe hurricanes and the severity of the loss in the event of those hurricanes.

without a doubt the value of the deal will change.