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b'Chubb (CB) is a combination of Chubb Insurance and ACE. Contrary to what people may assume, ACE actually acquired Chubb, not the other way around. Chubb\\u2019s brand has generally been better received than ACE\\u2019s so it made sense for the company to take on the Chubb name. Nevertheless, this remains very much \\u201cACE in sheep\\u2019s clothing\\u201d, as CEO Evan Greenberg has said in the past.

Greenberg rose to prominence at AIG while his father Hank was still the domineering CEO. After taking a year off, Evan joined ACE as the CEO and proceeded to make acquisitions and scale up the insurance business. While doing that, he was able to establish loss and expense ratios, as well as returns on equity, that generally outperformed the industries.

The Chubb acquisition is the largest yet and will undoubtedly be a large focus of the earnings report. The company has not yet made material adjustments to its Purchase Price Allocation accounting but, as noted in the video, it is important to keep an eye on how this evolves.

The other main area to pay attention to will be pricing. How has underwriting discipline been maintained (or lost) during the quarter and how does management expect it to evolve. There has been some areas of softness so far this year but it has yet to metastasize into a wide spread Property & Casualty disease. CB will be an excellent bellwether for the industry in that respect.

When dealing with financials, the headline numbers can often be misleading so it is important to look at these other factors that demonstrate the underlying health of the corporate entity. We will be looking for numbers to support management\\u2019s belief in the acquisition so that we can build more confidence around our investment thesis for the stock.

Bloomberg\\u2019s consensus forecast for the quarter is:
\\xb7 EPS: $2.57
\\xb7 Revenue $8.14 billion

Note that figures quoted in the video may not be the same as numbers in the article. The data are sourced from Bloomberg and may change as analysts update their models prior to the report.

This is part series of a series of preview videos released for the Q3 earnings season so please let us know if there is a stock you would like us to cover. You can tweet at us @tuskmediallc.

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Check out our video archive: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT1iK2MbBjXGCyni_CKxB9Q'