Greetings and welcome to the Markel Corporation third quarter 2011 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tom Gayner, Chief Investment Officer for Markel Corporation. Thank you. Mr. Gayner you may begin.

Thank you, Devin, good morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Markel Corporation's third quarter conference call. Thank you for joining us. On today's call we will follow our normal line-up with Anne Waleski leading up with the financial results, followed by Richie Whitt with operational comments. Mike Crowley is unable to join us today, so Richie will share and cover his comments. Then I will discuss our investing and non-insurance activities. After everyone’s comments, we’ll be all available for your questions. Before we begin, I am duty bound to remind you that during today's call, we may make forward-looking statements. Additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is described under the captions Risk Factors and Safe Harbor and Cautionary Statement in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report Form on 10-Q. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in the call today. You may find a reconciliation to GAAP of these measures on our website at www.markelcorp.com in the Investor Information section under non-GAAP reconciliation or in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. With that, Anne.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning everyone. I plan to follow the same format today as in prior quarters. I will focus my comments primarily on year-to-date results. I will start by discussing our underwriting operations followed by a brief discussion on our investment results and bring the two together with a discussion of our total results for the nine months. So moving right into the underwriting results, gross premium volume was just under $1.8 billion for the first nine months of 2011, up 16% compared to 2010. This increase was due to higher gross premium volume in the Specialty Admitted in London Insurance market segment. As of September 30, 2011 the Specialty Admitted segment included $170 million of gross written premium from our FirstComp workers’ compensation operations, which we acquired in late 2010. The increase in gross written premiums in the London Insurance market segment was due in part to an increase in premiums written by Elliott Special Risks, which been converted from an MGA operation to a risk bearing insurance division. We also saw significant increases in premium volumes within our Marine and Energy division due in part to offering large loan sizes and an improved pricing environment. Net written premiums were approximately $1.6 billion, up 15% to the prior year. Retentions were down slightly at 89% compared to 90% in 2010. Earned premiums increased 16%, primarily due to the higher earned premiums in the Specialty Admitted in London market segments as a result of higher gross premium volumes compared to 2010. This Specialty Admitted segment included $147 million of earned premium from FirstComp. Our combined ratio was 105% for the first nine months of 2011 compared to 99% in 2010. The increase was due to a higher current accident year loss ratio, partially offset by more favorable…

Thanks, Anne. As Tom said, Mike Crowley, is not going to be able to be with us today. Fortunately, we have redundancy built into the system here at Markel, and I’m going to discuss all of our insurance operations in his absence. The third quarter for North America and international operations was relatively stable from rating standpoint. The various entities out there to gather rate change data recorded that rate decreases have slowed. In particular, the CIAD recently released the commercial insurance market and survey reporting that rates for most lines of business and account sizes declined less frequently and at a slower pace this quarter. CIAD members placed a large majority of U.S. Commercial premium, which gives the survey a level of creditability. Markel own results confirmed that in some lines, line rates have flattened, while in other lines, particularly the casualty lines, they continue to show some weakness. The competitive rate environment still exists, and profitable business attracts many carriers buying for that business. The trends were amazingly consistent in both the domestic and international markets. Now I’d like to make a few comments for each of our divisions. The Specialty division generated gross written premium of 154 million during the quarter, this was an increase of about 50 million over prior year. FirstComp premiums totaled 60 million in the quarter. The premium shrinkage in other areas was due to corrective actions in our accident and health divisions, and non-renewing underperforming books of business. Year-to-date, the divisions generated gross written premium of 432 million, which is an increase of about 65% from prior year’s gross written premium of 261 million. The increase was due to the FirstComp acquisition. Highlights for Markel Specialty include, we launched a new Nursery and Garden Center program in the quarter. We completed work…

Thank you, Richie. I’ve cover two general topics this morning, and then of course, try to answer your questions. The first topic is our public investment portfolio. Now volatility technically means movement, and that would mean up, as well as down. When people use the word these days though, they mean down. And during the quarter, volatility as it is used in the vernacular of our day, reared its ugly head and down it was. For the year-to-date through September, our equity portfolio declined 8.8%. By the way, volatility actually meant up in October, and marketing the portfolio 30 days later would produce a very different result. On the fixed income side, interest rates continue to perform their world-class limbo dance and go lower, and lower, and lower. As the consequence, the coupon return was amplified by an increase in market values, and we earned a total return of 6.3% on the fixed income portfolio for the year-to-date. The combination of the two, as well as the modest negative FX effect of negative 0.2% produced a total return of 2.8% so far, in 2011. As I stated last quarter, and probably several quarters before that, the strategic goal of the investment department are to number one, protect and preserve the balance sheet through high-quality fixed income investment. Two, to allocate as much as possible the higher total return equity investment. And three, to increase the overall earning power and financial flexibility of the Markel Corporation through the ownership of a variety of profitable businesses. That will continue to be the case in the years to come. On the last call, I emphasized that none of that had changed despite the new headline that the U.S. government had just been downgraded from AAA. This call, I’ll reiterate in the face of…

Good morning. Vincent DeAugustino – Stifel Nicolaus: I guess I’d like to first start off and focus on the runoff errors in admissions program for mortgage servicers. I think it’s leaving a sizable dent in the otherwise very favorable reserved development. I think looking back to earlier this year, a large portion of liabilities relating to those problematic claims was resolved, resulting in some favorable development. And we’re now seeing some adverse development flow through again from these mortgage programs, and I am just curious if there is any historical precedent pointing to what the sale looks like, or at least how much longer until you think you would be out of the woods on this things. Thank you.

Hey, Vincent. I think you maybe have misunderstood what was in the Q; that reference to those programs was for the 2010 comparison. There is no development in this quarter for that, and the programs have performed as we had expected thus far. Vincent DeAugustino – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, great. Thank you. And then can you give any sense of where the FirstComp’s accident year combined ratio is running?

I think we have talked about this, shoot, last fourth quarter that we obviously are going to be in a transition year this year and we’re working to sort of bring their reserves to the same reserving standards that we have here at Markel. So the accident year is probably running into the tune of about 108-110 and we expect that to be about a $30 million underwriting loss for the year. And we are actually running a bit better than that. So the bottom line is, we’re exactly where we would have expected to be at this point in terms of FirstComp, and we are well on our way in terms of getting to our overall, more likely redundant than deficient stance on reserves. Vincent DeAugustino – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Dwelle of RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Mark Dwelle – RBC Capital Markets: Yeah, good morning. A couple of questions. First with respect to – in the other income line, you had around $90 million, 82 or so of that appeared to be related to Markel Ventures. Is there something unusual or infrequent relating to the remaining 9 million? That’s more than the amount we usual see through that line?

That amount is related to the MGA operations still associated with Aspen FirstComp. Mark Dwelle – RBC Capital Markets: Okay.

Mark, it’s probably worth pointing out that we took all of that business on to our paper as of July 1, so that will be running down as we move forward. Mark Dwelle – RBC Capital Markets: Okay, that’s helpful. With respect to Markel Ventures, as I recall, when that was a generally established, you had sort of a $250 million acquisition budget, and by my math, it looks like we’ve pretty much used that up. Has that been further authorized beyond that level or is my math a little bit off?

There was never a budget attached to that; that was a description of how much capital we had committed to it so far. So a rough over of magnitude what we have done so far, but we would expect to do more going forward. Mark Dwelle – RBC Capital Markets: Yeah, that’s fine. I misconstrued that that was a budget then. The next question I had, the credit default swaps, I guess there was a little bit of a drag as a result on the quarter. How much longer do we continue to have those?

2014. Mark Dwelle – RBC Capital Markets: Okay. I think that’s all of my questions, thank you.

(Operator instructions). Your next question Jack (Schrack) with Suntrust. Jack (Schrack) - Suntrust: Thank you very much. On the workers’ comp market, with the firming we have seen there in terms of rates, have you seen any recent change in the competitive landscape there?

Yes. Things are starting to happen in workers’ comp. I wouldn’t call it a dramatic change, but certainly, in some of the more distressed markets, particularly California, rates seem to be going the other way. In some of the other states, maybe it’s more of a flattening of rates. But certainly things appear to be a little bit ahead of the rest of the market in workers’ comp. There certainly appears to be a movement afoot. Jack (Schrack) - Suntrust: How about just in terms of any real competitive changes in regional versus national carriers. Any flavor or color there?

You know, I don’t know of anything particular to point out there. We’ve been in an incredibly, almost suicidally competitive market for a long time. I think, particularly, again, in California, things seem to be moving the other direction. I don't know that you’d see a big difference between regional’s, or monolines or nationals in particular. Jack (Schrack) - Suntrust: Great, thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Wendy Hauser with Martel Corporation. Please proceed with your question.

My item has already been addressed, thank you.

(Operator instructions). There appear to be no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the floor back to management for closing comments.

There appear to be no further questions, so we thank you for your participation. We’re around here today and would be happy to hear from you. Thank you, as always, for your support of Markel, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Bye bye.

This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.