Fairfax Financial companies face nearly $1bn in Q3 losses due to natural disasters + MORE Nov 3rd

Stelco Holdings Inc. shares gained almost 13 per cent on its first day of trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

HAMILTON _ Stelco Holdings Inc. is trading 11 per cent higher than its opening asking price on its first day of trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Stelco priced its initial public offering at $17 a share to pull in an expected $200 million. Its stock was up $1.90 at $18.90 in morning trading on the TSX.
The Hamilton-based steel company says it plans to use the money for capital investments, pension payments, and to increase its offerings in specialized steel products.
It wants to grow its offerings in galvanized steel, in part to regain a foothold in the nearby auto industry where it used to have a significant presence.
The company says it could also invest in co-generation to reduce its reliance on Ontario’s high electricity costs, and thereby reduce operating costs in the power-intensive industry.
Stelco’s history goes back to 1910 but in recent years has been beset by financial problems. It went into creditor protection in 2004 and was sold as a subsidiary to U.S. Steel Co…

(Stephen Crowley/The New York Times/Redux)
Briefly, on Thursday night, Donald Trump disappeared from Twitter. His account, reportedly shut down by a Twitter employee on the last day on the job at the company, was reinstated after only 11 minutes offline. Yet, for that brief period, there existed the possibility that Twitter—or someone else—had made calls for Trump’s exile from the platform a reality.
Back in February, during an earnings call, Twitter’s CFO, Anthony Noto hinted at how valuable Donald Trump is to Twitter. “The president’s use of Twitter has broadened the awareness of how the platform can be used,” he said, according to reports. “It shows the power of Twitter.”
RELATED: What will happen when we fall out of love with tech?
Few might have guessed at that time that one of the ways Twitter could be used was to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war, but of course Trump appeared to do just that in August. It was among the reasons that Valerie Plame Wilson sought later that month to raise $1 billion via a GoFundMe campaign in order to purchase a majority stake in Twitter, just to evict Trump from the platform…

TORONTO _ Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. (TSX:FFH) says hurricanes and other natural disasters in the latest quarter hit its portfolio companies with more than $1.2 billion in losses.
The Toronto-based company says the insurance industry in the third quarter saw some of the largest catastrophe losses ever due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, as well as earthquakes in Mexico.
Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa says companies in its portfolio have been hit with an estimated $1.2 billion in total losses, out of roughly $120-billion in losses across the industry.
Still, Watsa says he expects Fairfax to break even in 2017 and not suffer any significant loss of capital.
Fairfax saw third-quarter net earnings of $608 million, up from roughly $1.7 million in the same period a year ago.
Its latest earnings include a net after-tax gain of $1.2 billion on the sale of some of Fairfax’s equity interest in Indian insurance company ICICI Lombard.
 
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As U.S. hedge fund, private-equity firm square off, the retailer’s fate could rest with securities regulators and the TSX