Berkshire Hathaway Subsidiary to Buy Princeton Insurance Company

Medical Protective Co., a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., agreed to buy Princeton Insurance Co. to expand in liability coverage for health-care providers and in the Northeast U.S.

Published on October 3, 2011

The acquisition from Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Co. is expected to add more than 100 employees and be completed before the end of the year, Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Medical Protective said yesterday in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed for the all-cash deal.

Medical Liability, a New York-based mutual insurance company, merged with Princeton in 2000. Princeton serves more than 13,000 health-care providers including doctors, dentists, and hospitals and has annual gross-written premiums of about $140 million, according to the statement. Charles Lefevre will remain president of the Princeton, New Jersey-based firm.

“We’ve been absolutely delighted with our acquisition of MedPro in 2005, and look forward to MedPro completing additional ‘add-on’ transactions with companies -- like Princeton -- who seek the world’s most stable home for their policyholders in a very unstable and changing health-care liability landscape,” Berkshire Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Buffett, 81, said in the statement.