August 2013/2

The Insurance Insider tracks all the notable P&C sector share prices of the last week and compares year-to-date performances

Enstar had expanded its total assets from $5.9bn at the end of 2012 to $7.9bn at the mid-year due to its acquisitions over the past year, excluding the latest two deals with Torus and Atrium.

The market has priced in expectations of an escalating bidding war between Fairfax Financial and Bermudian legacy buyer Catalina for American Safety Insurance (ASI).

The Indian government included a long-awaited insurance bill as one of the priorities in its legislative programme when the country's parliament opened on 5 August.

Follow-form broker facilities could create a conflict of interest if underwriters are offered average pricing as part of a verticalised placement, rather than the lowest price received by any market writing a line, RPC partner Steven Francis told The Insurance Insider.

The UK commercial court has ruled that a group of reinsurers do not have to pay a 450mn Philippine peso ($10mn) claim stemming from a passenger ferry that capsized in a typhoon off the Philippine coast in 2008, killing 819 people.

Californian residents can now file class action suits against insurers for "unfair" advertising in certain circumstances, the Californian Supreme Court ruled on 1 August.

A New York federal court has given the go-ahead to Greenlight Reinsurance's $42mn breach of contract suit against the US managing general agency Appalachian and its Bermudian affiliate over a series of reinsurance contracts.

A California district court has rejected FM Global's attempt to reduce a disputed $387mn claim filed by defence contractor Northrop Grumman after Hurricane Katrina.

English law has long been regarded as a more insurer-friendly jurisdiction than many others, but a judge recently gave leave to appeal his decision to support underwriters' rejection of a claim because he thought the outcome unfair.

Rated reinsurers were the strongest competitors for Florida working-layer risk this year despite an increased capital markets presence, RenaissanceRe said on an earnings call.

The cat bond market showed pricing leadership in the first half of the year rather than detaching from traditional market rates, Goldman Sachs' ILS team argued.

As the market digests new CEO John Charman's bold management overhaul at Endurance, there are already early signs that the Bermudian (re)insurer's share price has started to outperform.

News of bigger-than-expected claims, weak pricing trends and tumbling investment returns combined to take the shine off the big European reinsurers' quarterly results over the last two weeks, triggering an unenthusiastic shareholder reaction.

The underwriting performance of the (re)insurers in our "Bermuda" universe of publicly quoted P&C (re)insurers improved in the first six months of 2013 compared to the corresponding period in 2012, despite a heavier year-on-year catastrophe burden in the second quarter.

Share repurchases at P&C (re)insurers in our Bermuda cohort continued to accelerate in the second quarter of 2013 amid a dearth of adequately profitable opportunities to deploy underwriting capital.

The top line of The Insurance Insider's Bermuda composite has grown by 8.6 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2012, taking total gross written premium (GWP) to $35.5bn.

The Canadian federal and provincial government will be forced to foot a large part of the bill from the train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, which is expected to top C$1bn mainly from environmental impact losses, according to Quebec tort law professor Daniel Gardner.

The spiralling wreck removal costs for the Costa Concordia prompted many (re)insurers to increase their loss estimates for the disaster in the second quarter.

As the reporting season begins to wind down catastrophe losses now total $6.8bn for the second quarter, according to The Insurance Insider’s Data Room.

Lancashire's surprise £266mn takeover of Lloyd's-based rival Cathedral, unveiled on 7 August, has stirred speculation that the London-listed (re)insurer may be quietly abandoning the business model that has made it one of the sector's stock market stars since it launched in 2005.

Forecasters have lowered their outlook for the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season but it is still expected to be above average.

JLT shares hit an all-time high closing price of 921.5p last Thursday (8 August) after the UK-based broker reported strong revenue growth and profits that beat analyst consensus.

The current accounting standards for London-listed (re)insurers do not present an accurate picture of financial performance due to the distortions created by mark-to-market changes on bond portfolios, Stephen Catlin has told The Insurance Insider.

Markel Corp remains strongly committed to the reinsurance business it obtained with the acquisition of Alterra, despite a significantly slimmed down management structure at the unit.

Syndicate forecast updates from Lloyd's insurers Kiln and MAP show an improving picture for 2012, largely because of lower loss estimates from Superstorm Sandy, the major catastrophe event of last year.

Kiln appointsTokio Marine-owned Kiln Group has appointed Satoshi Naganuma as active underwriter of Tokio Marine Kiln Syndicate 1880 (TMK 1880). TMK 1880 underwrites international construction and engineering business and offers direct and facultative coverage on an all risks of physical loss or damage basis.

Third Point Re, the reinsurer founded by hedge fund guru Daniel Loeb and run by Harbor Point CEO John Berger, is expected to make its keenly awaited New York Stock market debut on Wednesday (14 August).

The $60mn-$110mn reserve strengthening that Tower announced last week was well above speculative estimates of the insurer's potential reserve inadequacy, FBR analyst Randy Binner said.

The weight of new Chinese capacity with an appetite for US property business was felt on a number of recent blue-chip renewals, according to underwriting sources.

They cross our borders, undercut prices and take away our business.

Independent broker BMS has resumed active work on a Lloyd's start-up after an abortive effort in 2010/11, and is targeting a 1 April start date, The Insurance Insider can reveal.