January 2005/1

But uncertainty remains on how firm the company’s walk-away option is on remaining asbestos exposures... ACE Ltd has partially lifted the asbestos albatross which haunted the company's reserves ever since it acquired CIGNA Property & Casualty business

Brokers Aon and a host of Lloyd's syndicates were treated with a Christmas surprise after Justice Morison delivered his long awaited verdict against the reinsurers of the Aon 77 energy lineslip on 21 December. The verdict means that Cotesworth Syndicat

The Securities and Exchange Commission formally opened an investigation into Marsh & McLennan Companies' relationship with its private equity arm, MMC Capital, and its managed Trident investment funds, last month.

Robert Stearns, a senior vice-president and excess casualty broker at Marsh's New York office, pleaded guilty to a felony fraud charge last week in relation to New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer's investigations into bid-rigging.

XL D&O dispute heads for court; ALAS settles with reinsurers The acrimonious dispute between reinsurance broker RK Carvill and its former client XL Professional Liability over its disputed D&O treaties is set for an October 2005 show-down.

In our regular monthly News Digest, we round up key stories from the last month, presenting them to you in easily digestable snippets.

Fitch Ratings has found itself embroiled in a dispute with the German Insurance Industry Association GDV over its plans to publish unsolicited ratings on hundreds of European insurers. In a 7 January dated letter sent to Fitch Ratings' managing directo

Cover for up to $65bn of telecoms assets may have to be placed on the open market following the collapse in November 2004 of Pender Mutual Insurance Company (PMIC), the Isle of Man based insurer set up to provide cover for Cable & Wireless and other large

MMC investors clearly see resolution with the New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer as the key to resolving the traumas surrounding the broker's remuneration practices, if the share price's reaction is anything to go by.

Little over a week after receiving a request for information on the sale of its "non-traditional or loss mitigation insurance products" from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Berkshire Hathaway unit General Re revealed that it has been subpoen

MMC is close to restructuring its relationship with its private equity arm, MMC Capital, less than a month after the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) requested information about the unit.

A second dispute, which went to arbitration in November 2004, saw London market reinsurers victorious in a dispute over professional indemnity reinsurance cover broked by Carvill for the Attorneys Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), a US-based mutual insu