July 2003/2

Markel International, the London based arm of US insurer Markel Corporation, received a boost last week from rating agency AM Best when its financial strength rating was upgraded to A-.

Axis Speciality Ltd, the Bermudian insurer formed by John Charman in the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks, announced today (7 July) that it will provide directors & officers liability insurance and other financial lines coverage.

General insurers are less pessimistic than they were in the first three months of 2003, according to today’s latest quarterly financial services survey by the CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

Insurance information service provider Axco has offered an upbeat assessment in its inaugural report on the London Market.

Bermudian post 9/11 start-up Montpelier Re has tied up a $450mn funding arrangement to support its letter of credit needs.

SCOR has responded with dismay after ratings agency S&P downgraded its financial strength rating below the critical A- level last week.

UK insurer Royal and Sun Alliance (R&SA) has fought back against last week’s downgrade by ratings agency Moody’s, expressing its disappointment that “delivered improvements to date are not more fully taken into account.”

Victims of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) lost a landmark appeal last Thursday as a December 2002 High Court ruling was upheld, preventing claimants from suing airlines for compensation.

Alphastar – the firm formerly known as Stirling Cooke Brown (SCB) – has until the end of this week to file overdue financials or face delisting from Nasdaq.

Insurers exposed to the myriad of US shareholder class action suits were encouraged by New York courts last week who rejected four lawsuits against Wall Street banks and the dot.com companies they helped IPO in the heady days of the late nineties.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee in recess over the 4 July break, hopes for successful passage of Senator Orrin Hatch’s Fairness in Asbestos Resolution Act were dealt a blow last Thursday as insurers threatened to withdraw from the initiative to set up

Despite the relatively benign report by Royal Commissioner Justice Neville Owen into the A$5.3bn collapse of HIH, Australia’s prosecutors are lining up some of the key protagonists for criminal prosecutions over the debacle.