June 2010/1

Pru walks (reluctantly); AIG subprime pain lingers; Cash Byrne; Endurance end; Quinn queue; Worman's progress; Watsa punt...

Oz grief; Canopius closes in; Walsham sale; Omega recruits; Chaucer's tale; Lloyd's East...

KPMG scrutinises FirstCity contracts; Alea sees improvements in MBS book

One of the largest gatherings of the UK and international P&C legacy market takes place this month with the R&Q commutations Rendez-Vous in Norwich, UK.

UK regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has upped its budget by almost 10 percent to £454.7mn for the next financial year.

Broking houses in the UK approach higher-risk business involving third parties "far too informally", according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The new UK chancellor George Osborne has hinted that the coalition government would not dampen the Conservatives' commitment to review a tax policy paper prepared by The Insurance Insider's London 100 group.

US Senate approval of the Democrats' sweeping Wall Street regulatory reform bill has all but cemented the creation of an Office of National Insurance (ONI) within the Treasury.

Kingsway Financial Services (KFS) returned to the black in the first quarter, despite a net operating loss and its combined ratio ballooning by 30.4 percentage points from a year earlier to 136.2 percent.

Swiss Re and six Lloyd's syndicates have been named as defendants in a US lawsuit over alleged non-payment of claims, in which diamond wholesaler Lazare Kaplan (LKI) is seeking $640mn in damages.

Disgraced financier Allen Stanford has written personally to the US judge presiding over the Stanford Financial Group (SFG) directors' and officers' (D&O) dispute to ask to be allowed his own choice of counsel.

US wholesaler CRC Insurance Services has moved its legal fight over 120+ staff that defected to new rival Ryan Specialty Group (RSG) last month to the Chicago courts.

Guy Carp unveils new capital markets CEO; TigerRisk expands; Glacier's Nelson Re review pulled

An attempt by the Insurance Futures Exchange (IFEX) to have cat derivatives recognised as reinsurance by Florida regulators failed to pass into law before the legislative session closed.

Bermudian (re)insurer Lancashire Group's head of retro, Bryan Bumsted, has resigned to join George Soros-backed Q Re, Trading Risk revealed late last month.

Six cat bonds valued at more than $1.5bn were released in a late May rush of insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance, taking total capacity available to (re)insurers at the start of the US hurricane season to $2.4bn.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was followed swiftly by the loss of the Aban Pearl gas rig off the coast of Venezuela on 13 May, which is set to cost the market some $235mn.

Energy mutual OIL is set to emerge as a winner following the Horizon loss as capacity tightens across the market, The Insurance Insider understands.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist's populist veto of the state property insurance bill has set him against his own insurance commissioner and denied measures that would have played well with voters.

As the 1 June ushered in the official start to the US hurricane season, all of the major weather forecasters were united in predicting a higher than average chance of storms making landfall

Between them 13 heavyweight investors own just under half of the publicly traded Lloyds insurers' equity, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Motor underwriter Equity's Syndicate 218 could lose almost £200mn on its 2008 and 2009 years of account after a dramatic deterioration in its claims experience.

Lloyd's is in the final stages of assembling a delegation of underwriters, brokers and loss adjustors to dispatch to Chile

Lime Street's quoted (re)insurers - like many of their global P&C counterparts - are trading at brutally low valuations, caused by the soft market and investor jitters about the sector's earning prospects and financials generally