Hurricane Katrina (2005) was up at 160 Billion and Harvey (2017) hit 125 billion. So 400 Billion is just at the upper end of the expected range.
wouldn't actually giving out the $11mi to the consumer, or picking 10 consumers, create more brand awareness than promising $1bi that nobody can get?
Insurance policies require you to pay a certain amount guaranteed, then pay back a much larger amount if something unlikely happens. So Pepsi had to pay $10 million. If the right thing happened during the game then Berkshire Hathaway would have paid a billion, and some lucky consumer would have walked away a newly minted billionaire.
Berkshire's General Re does reinsurance, not re-"reinsurance". Is there a recursive step -- Could General Re face a claim that it needs to leans on the rest of Berkshire to pay?
The article says its insurance companies face a 2 percent chance of being "$12 billion" insolvent, which Berkshire could cover from non-insurance profits. But would that still be true if the claims came in, or would the non-insurance companies also have correlated down years? I suppose Berkshire Hathaway is big enough that if it came down to it, it could liquidate equity ($500B minus devaluation due to whatever catastrophe) to make good on claims.
Per https://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-insuran..., they are planning for handling a potential $400 billion catastrophe.