Dajia Insurance Group

• The Bottom Line: Dajia Insurance is the state-led cleanup of a spectacular corporate train wreck, offering a masterclass for value investors on the catastrophic dangers of debt-fueled ambition, poor corporate governance, and straying outside one's area of expertise.
• Key Takeaways:
• What it is: A Chinese insurance company created by the government in 2019 to take over the assets of the imploded Anbang Insurance Group.
• Why it matters: It's a real-world, high-stakes case study in risk. The story of Anbang's fall and Dajia's rise illustrates the critical importance of a margin_of_safety, transparent corporate_governance, and understanding political_risk.
• How to use it: Not as a direct investment (it's not publicly traded for Western investors), but as a mental model to identify red flags—like aggressive, unrelated acquisitions and opaque leadership—in any company you analyze.

Imagine your neighbor, let's call him “Mr. Anbang,” suddenly wins a small lottery. Instead of paying off his mortgage, he uses the money as a down payment on a dozen credit cards. He then goes on a wild, debt-fueled shopping spree. He buys a struggling Italian football club, a five-star hotel in New York (the famous Waldorf Astoria), a Belgian bank, and a Korean insurance company. To your other neighbors, he looks like a genius, a tycoon on the rise. But you, a careful observer, notice he's not actually earning much money from these new toys; he's just using one credit card to pay off another,