January 2005/5

Willis Group Holdings Ltd continued its strategy of selectively acquiring regional specialists by announcing that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Californian employee benefits broker PRIMARY Worldwide Corporation.

The world’s fourth largest insurance intermediary, Arthur J Gallagher & Co, has merged its reinsurance units and rebranded them as Gallagher RE, the company announced last week.

Marsh & McLennan announced that it has restructured its consulting arm Mercer Inc into two units and that its president Peter Coster would retire after spending 40 years at the firm.

UK insurer Royal and Sun Alliance (R&SA) is being sued by car manufacturer General Motors Corp for failing to pay millions of dollars of asbestos claims, it emerged last week.

As exclusively revealed in a special report from The Insurance Insider last Thursday (27 January), Britain’s second largest listed insurance company Prudential plc has replaced its insurance broker Marsh Ltd with its UK rival Aon.

Fourth quarter 2004 figures from The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers (CIAB) reveal a climate of significant softening of rates in the commercial property casualty market.

Paris headquartered insurer Axa has reported a modest increase in its 2004 sales, helped by a recovery in American life and savings revenues and premium gains from its P&C business.

US insurer The Hartford has raised its earnings expectations on the back of an optimistic outlook for the rating environment in 2005.

Lloyd’s has lost out in round one of the Central Fund reinsurance contract dispute after the panel in the first stage of the arbitration tribunal found the lead reinsurer Swiss Re “prima facie entitled to avoid the policy”, based on the way it was present

Marsh & McLennan’s private equity arm MMC Capital closed its London office on Friday but there is still no announcement on whether the unit will be spun-off.

World’s largest broker Marsh has today (31 January 2005) announced an $850mn settlement with Eliot Spitzer to end the New York attorney general’s probe into so-called contingent commissions and bid rigging.

Lloyd’s insurer Highway released a statement to the London Stock Exchange last week in a bid to clarify its position on alleged over-reserving on Syndicate 37 and Syndicate 2037.