April 2017/1

The Lloyd's and London market was last week challenged to get behind a charity adventure to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the daring and celebrated Second World War Operation Frankton commando raid on Bordeaux.

After months of speculation (a fair amount of it here) Lloyd's has chosen the beach head that it will use to try to attack the continental European market after Brexit comes into effect in 2019.

With the decision on the location of Lloyd's Brexit-workaround subsidiary taken, managing agents must now take a call on whether to use it or to pursue their own contingency plans in parallel.

A Berkshire Hathaway company that offers workers' compensation programmes that have been banned in California and two other states has become the target of a federal lawsuit in New York.

Reinsurers were given some reprieve at the 1 April renewals, as property catastrophe reinsurance rate declines continued to moderate and cedants increased their overall purchasing, according to Willis Re.

Time is running out fast in the 2017 Florida legislative session for meaningful reform to address the assignment of benefits (AOB) issue that has been swamping Citizens and private homeowners' carriers in the state.

Lawrence Holder, the former managing director of Lancashire's Lloyd's arm Cathedral, has joined Peter Scales' start-up Blenheim as non-executive chairman, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

The dwindling appetite of a number of reinsurers for US trucking and transportation treaties is creating more challenging placement conditions for brokers on some deals, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Back in its 2006 annual report, Lloyd's reported net earned premiums of £12.7bn ($15.8bn) and spent £3.4bn on acquisition costs and £910mn on admin.

The Lloyd's market looks on course for a resurgence of M&A in the latter stages of the soft cycle with a number of situations developing in the wake of Argenta's fully valued sale to Hannover Re last month.