After the third consecutive quarter of “excellent” earnings this year, Validus can’t find much to complain about, says chairman and CEO Ed Noonan.In an interview with The Royal Gazette on Friday after the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Mr Noonan expanded on Validus’s impending Flagstone merger, Validus’s global positioning and the resignation of their CFO who is leaving Bermuda.During a quiet catastrophe quarter, the Bermuda-based company reported operating earnings of $170.6 million that easily beat Wall Street analyst expectations and recorded net income of $207.3 million. The company’s book value per share was $36.27 and after considering the 25 cent per share dividend in the third quarter, the company grew by 6.1 percent from the second quarter.Validus has grown its book value by 13.8 percent annually since its formation. The total capitalisation for the seven-year-old firm is $4.64 billion.“The results are excellent and it’s not just because the wind hasn’t blown, we’ve got a very good business model,” said Mr Noonan. “We’ve positioned ourselves in the most attractively priced classes and you’re seeing that performance come through.”Now, the company counts itself among the top five largest reinsurers in the world.“After the big four European reinsurers, in terms of capital, we’re the largest catastrophe player in the world,” he said.“That’s important because in the catastrophe business size and scale matter. You have to matter to customers, you have to matter to brokers — the quality and size of our balance sheet is a huge asset to us.”He added that due to changing market dynamics in the catastrophe business, it’s getting “harder and harder to be a generalist or a smaller player” and Validus plans on being neither.The company will only get bigger as the timeline for the merger with Flagstone, which was founded in Bermuda but now domiciled in Luxembourg, is on schedule — expecting to conclude during the fourth quarter and to start writing combined business on January 1.Mr Noonan said that while most of Flagstone’s business is “fairly well priced”, Validus won’t seek to keep all of it, saying “Flagstone had an appetite that included a lot of pro rata business, more risk excessive loss business, more regional central European type customers and that doesn’t really tend to play well to our risk appetite so I would expect to see that diminish considerably.”When asked if there were lay offs on the horizon for Flagstone, which has around 200 staff, around 40 of whom are based in Bermuda, Mr Noonan said that they are still working through the integration process but to expect redundancies.“I think the obvious answer is yes, the Flagstone workforce will be smaller at the end of the process but we’re still going through that,” he said, adding that Validus is still a growing company, thinking of themselves first and foremost as a Bermudian company.“How ever Flagstone shakes out we will continue to be a growing employer in Bermuda and a great supporter of the Island.”Asked about rival bidders stepping into the fray before the deal is concluded, Mr Noonan said, “The only people who have broken up mergers in recent history is Validus. I am always kind of bemused by the idea that somebody would be courageous enough to pick the fight.”Validus also announced last week that its long-standing chief financial officer Jeff Consolino, who has been with Validus since its inception, will be stepping down in February to take a position with American Financial Group in Cincinnati, Ohio. He will remain on Validus’s Board of Directors and Jeff Sangster, currently an EVP and Group chief accounting officer, will assume the CFO role.Mr Consolino and his young family currently reside in Bermuda and while saying the move was for “profoundly personal” reasons, Mr Noonan stated that it was not a reflection on Bermuda.“It was a great career opportunity for Jeff at a point in time where it was a good fit for his family,” he said. “Nothing negative at all about Bermuda.”Meanwhile, Validus’s investment vehicle PaCRe, two AlphaCat sidecars and Lloyd’s insurer Talbot have made the company the “go to” market for clients and brokers, said Mr Noonan.The trio have added to the company’s momentum by contributing $6.3 million, $18 million and $52.1 million, respectively, to the firm’s net income.“Our activities in third-party capital continues to go extremely well, they are adding nicely to our earnings,” said Mr Noonan. “That business is complementary to what we do.”Though PaCRe took a $50.4 million hit in Q2 from unrealised investment losses, Mr Noonan said the entity is picking up speed and gaining traction with investors.“PaCRe is doing extremely well,” he said. “We have targeted the accounts we wanted to write, we’ve been successful in putting PaCRe on those accounts and the results this quarter were excellent. It’s off to a great start.”