Prem Vats: How the person who left home with eight dollars bought IDBI Bank for Rs 52 thousand crores

Billionaire industrialist Prem Vats, who left Hyderabad for Canada with just eight dollars in his pocket, will now be the owner of IDBI Bank.

Prem Vats is called Warren Buffett of Canada and is the owner of Fairfax Financial Holdings worth $100 billion.

Fairfax Prem Vats' business, which started as a small insurance company in 1985, has transformed into a huge financial company due to his wisdom, foresight and discipline.

This company of Prem Vats will pay Rs 52,878 crore for 60.72 percent stake of IDBI Bank.

According to news agency Reuters, this is India's largest cross-border banking deal.

Let us know who is Prem Vats and how he built such a huge business empire.

'Warren Buffett of Canada'

Prem Vats is an industrialist of Indian origin. He came to Canada from Hyderabad in the 1970s.

Vatsa does his work quietly. Watts, who avoided the glamor of media, hardly spoke to any reporters during the first 15 years of Fairfax.

He also started conference calls with investors in 2001 itself. Vats has a reputation as a 'value investor'.

His mentor John Watson taught him the tricks of Benjamin Graham's value investing.

Benjamin Graham's principle states that 'Invest in companies with strong fundamentals that are undervalued and stay in them for the long term.'

Warren Buffett, one of the world's biggest investors, is also an advocate of more or less similar investments.

Following these principles, Prem Vats invested in many such companies which are proving to be gold mines for him today.

This is why Vats is called Warren Buffett of Canada.

Journey from Hyderabad to Canada

Prem Vatsa's father, born in 1950 in Hyderabad city of India, was a school teacher. He studied in Hyderabad Public School.

This is the same school from where Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan and World Bank Group Chairman Ajay Banga have studied.

After completing his schooling, Vatsa studied at IIT Madras and then passed the IIM exam.

But Vats's fate was written somewhere else.

Vats' elder brother was living in Canada and his father wanted his younger son to also pursue a career in Canada.

Watts writes in his book 'The Fairfax Way', "I had no interest in Canada. I didn't want to leave India but at the age of 22 you listen to your father.

After reaching Canada, he did MBA from Western Ontario University. To meet the expenses of his studies, he sold air conditioners and furnaces.

According to Vats, the humility and hard work of a salesman later helped him a lot.

family man

Prem Vatsa gives a lot of importance to family values.

According to an article published in the Economic Times, Vats's father used to say that 'Work as hard as if everything depends on you and pray as intensely as if everything depends on God.'

Vats started his career as a research analyst at Confederation Life Insurance Company in 1974.

In 1984, he opened his own company, Hamblin Watts Investment Counsel Limited. Just a year later, he got a big success when he bought the failing truck insurance company Markel Financial.

success formula

The biggest formula for Prem Vats's success was hidden in those struggling companies whose foundations were strong.

He had a tremendous ability to identify such companies and also had the patience to remain invested in them for a long time.

Vatsa is also an expert in recognizing the pulse of time. They start hearing the sound of trouble from a distance.

With this ability, he identified the international stock market crash of 1987 (known as Black Monday), the collapse of the Japanese economy in 1990 and the international financial crisis of 2008, i.e. the sub-prime crisis.

During this period, Prem Vats took advantage of the American slowdown and bought shares of such companies at very low prices which had the potential to do well in the future.

However, Fairfax also suffered setbacks. The company suffered huge losses due to hurricanes like Harvey, Irma, Maria and the forest fires in California.

Covid-19 proved to be a big challenge for it, when its insurance business suffered huge losses.

But Prem Vats' ability to overcome these setbacks brought Fairfax back on track.

Compared to October 2022, the value of Fairfax had quadrupled in 2025.

Fairfax's business strategy has been successful.

By collecting so much insurance premium even before paying the claim, the company has been successful in investing it in companies whose fundamentals are strong but the shares are cheap.

In view of his extraordinary contribution in business and industry, Prem Vats has been honored with Padma Shri.

Prem Vatsa business in India

The investment in IDBI Bank will be Fairfax's largest investment to date.

However, they entered the Indian market in 2014 under the name of Fairfax India Holding.

Prem Vats' son Ben Vats runs a fund management company named Marvel Capital here which invests only in shares of Indian companies.