August 2015/2

Aegis London's head of cyber Rick Welsh and his team have left the top-quartile Lloyd's syndicate, The Insurance Insider understands.

Zurich ‘would cut RSA R/I'; Esure profits fall; Jago chair ; Talbot promotes Tebbutt; AJG buys Colombian broker; Canopius drives Sompo improvement; Glacier Re to buy Papiro; Barbican hires Sinisgalli; $1bn XL buyback; US rates up 1%; Munich Re targets EUR3bn; Navigators profits climb; Heritage grows; Markel falls to loss; AmTrust to buy Nationale Borg; Hannover Re raises profit target; Fishman to weigh anchor; Aviva outperforms; Advent expands; Chan-hom's $1.6bn bill

Endurance bought $100mn of aggregate retrocession cover to protect its portfolio as it prepared for the Montpelier Re takeover, the firm revealed on its second quarter earnings call.

United Insurance Holdings worked with one of its reinsurance partners to source $90mn of third-party capital to set up a captive reinsurer when it renewed its 2015 reinsurance programme.

The latest Bosphorus cat bond from the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) was oversubscribed and the transaction may double in size to reach $200mn, sources told sister publication Trading Risk last week.

Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT)'s Australian operations once again outperformed all of the international broker's other corporate business units in the first half of the year, but pressure is growing on the lucrative local council business that fuels the division's outperformance.

Big-three broker Willis bought London wholesaler Miller for the equivalent of 11x trailing 2014 earnings, the firm revealed in its 10-Q filing last week (6 August).

Willis Re's moved on Friday (7 August) to tie up a cadre of its most senior executives with new management appointments.

Berkshire Hathaway's reinsurance division recorded an underwriting loss of $411mn in the second quarter of the year after an Australia storm and negative currency impacts hit Warren Buffett's firm.

Insurance broker Integro expects to accelerate its growth by acquisition strategy under new private equity ownership.

The London and Lloyd's specialty insurance market is as challenged as it has been at any period since the late 1990s as cyclical pressures combine with secular challenges to squeeze the life out of risk carriers.

If ever there were a good year to ask for a sabbatical, 2016 looks like being it.