Credit Suisse, the Swiss investment bank and fund manager, has spent the best part of $200 million in around eight days, building its stake in QBE.
The buying was detailed in a lengthy update of a substantial shareholding notice filed yesterday.
Credit Suisse said it bought a net 10.5 million shares from June 23 to July 2 on behalf of clients and internal funds.
That lifted the group’s stake to 9.91%, or 102.6 million shares, from 8.90% or 92.09 million.
At yesterday’s closing price of $17.63, the Credit Suisse holding was worth around $1.8 billion.
Credit Suisse had earlier in June lifted its stake from 7.90% to 8.90% according to a filing on June 23.
All up the fund manager has spent nearly $400 million building its stake in QBE on behalf of its funds and clients since March, when the last substantial shareholding notice was filed.
The latest notice details that many of the purchases were for Aberdeen Asset Management, which also appears in the company’s share register with 8.22% at June 21. (So there is probably some double counting.)
The buying by Credit Suisse is in contrast to that of the Commonwealth Bank and its various arms, including the huge First State fund management group.
The CBA said on June 21 that it was no longer a substantial shareholder, meaning it had sold down its existing stake of 5.6% to under the 5% reporting level.
Credit Suisse and Aberdeen Asset Managers are the two biggest holders in QBE.
Their purchases have supported the QBE share price during a time when the market seems to have gone off the stock.
It is exposed to the BP oil leak in the Gulf through its reinsurance arm and also exposed to claims from the Chile earthquake earlier in the year, as well as other weather related claims here and offshore.
In acknowledging these one-off big claims, QBE pointed out that it still had a lot of capacity to absorb similar claims over the rest of 2010.
QBE updated the market on its interim and full year prospects on June 16.
The CBA seems to have reduced its stake after that date; Credit Suisse bought another 2% from then until last Friday.
QBE’s share price was $19.06 the day before the update; it fell to a year’s low of $17.11 on Tuesday (after it revealed it had spent around $A400 million buying a reinsurer in Belgium).
The shares rose in the small bounce on Tuesday afternoon, but finished at $17.63 yesterday, down a cent on the day. They had hit a day’s high of $17.91.
The shares are down around 30% this year, against the overall market being down around 13%.
QBE said it had bought a company called Secura NV for at least 267 million euros from financial group, KBC, which has to sell interests in various businesses as part of a deal that saw it bailed out by the Belgian government during the GFC.
QBE said Secura’s 2010 gross written premium was around 200 million euro and QBE will fund the deal from its own funds, it said.
QBE has $2.5 billion of excess capital and has said it can raise $1.5 billion in debt.
QBE expects a small increase in profit in 2011 from the acquisition.
