July 17, 2015
In
Insurance
Stop the Presses: ACE to Acquire Chubb
On July 1st, the insurance world experienced a major event. I woke at 4:00am for my pre-sunrise run and upon my return home was bombarded with the news: ACE acquires Chubb for $28.3 billion! I did quite a double-take, but much to my surprise, I saw that these two insurance companies had indeed joined forces.
In estate planning, there are some common stumbling blocks to completing a plan. Who will care for your children? At what point do you end life-sustaining care? How much should you leave to your children? Perhaps the most challenging of these is the last. Picking a number that provides a leg-up for your heirs while protecting them from leading uninspired, unmotivated lives can seem like the work of a magician. Luckily, our wealth planning experts have put together three ways you can find your magic number.
Newcomers are arriving in record numbers to the Pacific Northwest. Home inventory levels are at ten year lows in many market areas. Three factors, listed below, have the potential to put continued pressure on available housing and consequently drive up valuations.
Coldstream Capital Management has been named one of Washington’s 100 Best Companies to Work For by 
As you may have heard, Greece missed a $1.7 loan billion payment to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday. While this event and the closure of the Greek banking system are dominating news coverage this week, a $3.9 billion bond payment due to the European Central Bank on July 20 is much more important to world markets, since failure to pay would put Greece into a formal state of default. The situation remains extremely fluid, with developments coming nearly hourly. It is unlikely that current negotiations will lead to an agreement prior to a scheduled July 5 referendum, which will indicate whether the public will accept further austerity in order to stay in the Eurozone. Since the current government was elected on an anti-austerity platform, it may collapse if the referendum passes or if a deal on further spending cuts and tax increases is struck in the meantime.