Ajit Jain, the president of Berkshire Hathaway’s re-insurance group in Stamford, Connecticut, has long been on industry watchers’ list of likely successors to Warren Buffett much before the legendry investor praised him in a letter to shareholders on Sunday. But who is Ajit Jain?

Born in Orissa in 1951, Jain graduated in 1972 from IIT Kharagpur with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Those who knew him then said he did not take his studies very seriously and could talk about economics and sociology through the night.

Jain worked for IBM in India from 1973 to 1976 and then moved to the US, where he earned an MBA degree from Harvard University. He joined McKinsey & Co but returned to India in the early eighties to get married, returning to McKinsey in the US, because, as he later told some close friends, his wife wanted to move there more than he did.

In 1986, Jain left McKinsey to work on insurance operations for Buffett. At the time, he knew little about the business he would become an expert in.

This is not the first time that Buffett has praised Jain. In a May 2006 news conference, he said that he still spoke to Jain every day. “That’s how I get smarter. A year earlier he had said: “There’s nobody at Hathaway that I would have more confidence in than Ajit.” In 2003 he said of Jain: It’s impossible to overstate his value to Berkshire.” A year earlier he said he had known details of almost every policy that Ajit had written since he came to the company in 1986. “His extraordinary discipline, of course, does not eliminate losses. It does, however, prevent foolish losses. And that’s the key.”

Jain specialises in so-called mega-catastrophe coverage — taking on risks that rivals avoid. He insured the Sears Tower in Chicago, America’s tallest building after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. He also underwrote the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City after the attack when big groups shunned the games as too risky.

Jain’s 31-member re-insurance group revenues comprises a substantial portion of Berkshire’s overall insurance group revenues — $3.7 billion out of $21.1 billion in 2004 and $3.96 billion out of $22billion in 2005.

Talking to a group of shareholders at one stockholders’ meeting, Buffet said of Jain, “If you see him here, be sure to bow. With such glowing support from the Oracle of Omaha, no wonder Jain is the top runner for one of the world’s most coveted posts.