The Agnellis are paying up to do an impression of Warren E. Buffett.

The holding company of the Agnelli family’, Exor, is offering $6.4 billion to buy PartnerRe out of a merger with a fellow Bermudan insurer, Axis Capital Holdings. If the Agnelli family, who also own Fiat, can pull it off, they could use Berkshire Hathaway-style stable cash flows to fund further acquisitions. They are even using Mr. Buffett’s adviser of choice, Byron Trott, on the deal.

PartnerRe’s proposed tie-up with Axis, announced in January, looked a messy merger of equals. PartnerRe got a slightly larger share of the group, but was still seen as selling out cheaply to Axis, just below 2014 tangible book value. Exor is now offering 1.13 times book value in cash, and a 16 percent premium to PartnerRe’s undisturbed share price for a deal that will bring no synergies and comes with $250 million in break-up fees.

Pouncing on a downtrodden sector and disrupting an agreed deal looks more like a classic private equity play. But adding reinsurance to a roster of companies that also includes the soccer team Juventus will transform Exor, whose listed value is only 10.6 billion euros, or about $11.3billion.

And it makes sense. Exor is selling its stake in the real estate group Cushman and Wakefield, a smart move when low rates are fuelling a global property boom. The reverse is true for reinsurers, hurt by falling investment income and sidelined by capital market investors chasing yields. PartnerRe was trading in excess of 1.65 times tangible book in 2005, according to Barclays.