March 2011/4

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The process for agreeing all claims for the United Standard Insurance Company Ltd (USI)'s scheme of arrangement has been completed, according to scheme administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

UK-listed run-off firm Tawa's 2010 annual results were well received by investors, with its share price rising more than 5 percent since they were published on 25 March

Lloyd's run-off firm RITC Syndicate Management Ltd (RSML) denied it is considering an imminent sale of its business - but has appointed corporate advisers Lexicon Partners to consider possible sale approaches

AJ Gallagher International and Heath Lambert are in exclusive takeover negotiations as the two sides move closer to finalising the terms, The Insurance Insider understands

Lonmar Global Risks has been hit twice in recent weeks after losing its Burrup account and with head of casualty Tom Payne resigning from the board

Senior aviation brokers Jim Joannou and Richard Draper have left Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) in what may be the first sign of the UK broker easing up on its big aviation push

More than two years after it took on a $500mn bridging facility at punitive interest rates with Goldman Sachs, Willis is refinancing the debt on significantly more favourable terms

Niche venture capital company BP Marsh and Lime Street stalwart Michael Wade are poised to end more than two years of uncertainty at broker Besso Holdings by taking control of the London-headquartered company

Lloyd's turnkey provider Whittington is up for sale at a price tag of around $60mn and has attracted interest from a number of potential buyers 

Representatives of Citizens Property Insurance Company (CPIC) met underwriters in Bermuda late last month to assess how much limit Florida's state-backed insurer can buy with its $125mn budget for 2011

Relative newcomer Torus's withdrawal from the excess liability market in March was hastened by last year's heavy loss experience in the segment, sources suggest

Amlin's Dutch CEO walks; Gryphon loss ups to $800mn; MMC in boardroom reshuffle; Albers heads new Swiss Re arm; Munich Re suspends buybacks...

Nuclear leads Lloyd's top performers; RK Harrison profits dip; Brit squeeze-out begins; Atrium merges on Wilkins exit; Advisen Connects...

BP has asked a Texas judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by some institutional investors, claiming the UK High Court should hear the case

A roll-call of stateside insurers and brokers agreed to pay $36.8mn in March to settle a long-running Eliot Spitzer-inspired lawsuit that claimed the companies engaged in bid-rigging

US broker AmWins has settled the lawsuit it brought last year against Pat Ryan's wholesale start-up RT Specialty that alleged "misappropriation of trade secrets" after the defection of one of its senior brokers

The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) has confirmed its budget for the financial year 2011/12 will increase by just over 10 percent to £500.5mn

UK corporation tax will be cut by 2 percent this year, as the government outlined its plans to boost growth in a budget that tax advisers instantly hailed as good for insurers

The regulatory cost for brokers in the UK is three times higher than for rivals in the second most expensive European state, new research by the British Insurance Brokers Association (Biba) has revealed

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (Eiopa) will conduct a second industry-wide stress test to assess participants' vulnerability to a range of potential adverse developments

New protectionist regulations in Brazil that threaten to disrupt the progress made by international reinsurers have sparked howls of protest from trade groups

The European Union has declared that (re)insurers are well capitalised and broadly prepared for Solvency II, but the new regulator brought in to chaperone the transition is warning against complacency

Price indications on cat bonds fell in March, underlining fears in the insurance-linked securities sector that a portion of the $1.4bn outstanding capacity exposed to Japanese earthquake risk could be triggered

Munich Re placed $100mn of US and European wind cover in the cat bond market just days after the 11 March Japanese earthquake and tsunami threw the (re)insurance markets into turmoil

Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield traded over $100mn of Japanese earthquake industry loss warranties (ILW) shortly after the 11 March catastrophe, sister publication Trading Risk has learned

Cedants to around $1.4bn of outstanding Japan earthquake-exposed cat bonds face an agonising wait to discover if coverage is available, as risk modellers calculate the parametric values that trigger the majority of the notes

Analysts and industry commentators typically turn to history when trying to evaluate what kind of an impact a catastrophe event will have on market dynamics

Berkshire Hathaway's stock lost $6.3bn in value in the week following the Japan earthquake - before trading up later in March

While (re)insurers are slowly getting to grips with the scale of property losses from the Japan earthquake, the wildcat element is contingent business interruption (CBI) cover

Lloyd's is unlikely to declare officially a loss estimate for Japan until May at the earliest but that has not stopped the speculation as to what the market's ultimate net loss will be from the disaster

In the week immediately following the 11 March Japanese earthquake the shares of the quoted global specialty (re)insurers fell by an average of 5.51 percent

Regardless of whether the Japanese quake costs international (re)insurers $15bn or $30bn it will take cat reinsurers years to earn back the cost of the 2010 and Q1 2011 losses

After "K", "R", and "W" had done their worst in 2005, the then-independent reinsurance broker Benfield coined a phrase to describe the "hard on top, soft underneath" market that followed at the 1 January 2006 renewals and beyond

Ascot founder Martin Reith and unknown financial backers are in takeover talks with Chaucer, The Insurance Insider can reveal

Start-up collateralised reinsurer Catco has raised $7.4mn of new capital from a share issue in an early sign of the market "reloading" after the recent roll-call of brutal cat losses

With a Q1 cat bill as high as $300mn, The Insurance Insider looks at what the Bermudian reinsurer is doing to reassure the rating agencies

The Insurance Insider examines major 1 April treaty renewals such as ZFS and Travelers to see what impact the Q1 cats are having on rates