MKL vs MTD Comparison

Markel's primary business is property and casualty insurance. The company focuses primarily on specialty lines, ranging from areas such as executive liability to commercial equine insurance. The acquisition of Alterra in 2013 added substantial reinsurance operations, which now account for a little over 10% of premiums. The company uses capital generated by its insurance operations to buy noninsurance operations in diverse areas, such as bakery equipment manufacturing and residential homebuilding.

Mettler-Toledo supplies weighing and precision instruments to customers in the life sciences (around 55% of sales), industrial (around 40%), and food retail (around 5%) industries. Its products include laboratory and retail scales, pipettes, pH meters, thermal analysis equipment, titrators, metal detectors, and X-ray analyzers. Mettler leads the market for weighing instrumentation and controls more than 50% of the market for lab balances. The business is geographically diversified, with the Americas accounting for about 37% of sales, Europe about 28%, China about 16% and the rest of the world about 19%.