May 2006/3

Steve McGill, the head of Aon Corp's Global Large Corporate unit, has recruited a team of senior ex-Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc colleagues to join the broking giant, Insider Week can reveal.

Defunct Australian insurer HIH's has been ordered to pay indemnity costs to broker JLT Risk Solutions after its film finance action ended with its claim being dismissed.

Reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter has launched its Electronic Claims File (ECF) initiative for London Market reinsurers.

Lloyd's insurer Chaucer Syndicates has appointed two new directors from within the business.

Brit Insurance Holdings plc has announced a record-breaking five-year sponsorship deal with Surrey County Cricket Club and the Brit Insurance Oval.

MMC chief executive Michael Cherkasky pointed to the green shoots of recovery in his company's first quarter results on 3 May, but it was also apparent that the global brokers are still operating in a brutally tough trading environment.

Despite unveiling hurricane losses of $3.4bn for last year, Berkshire Hathaway Inc said it remains committed to writing catastrophe (re)insurance.

Last autumn's record hurricane losses have spurred a sea change in approaches to underwriting catastrophe risk and the use of modelling techniques, said panellists at a market briefing hosted by The Insurance Insider in London last Friday (5 May).

The trade association for Lloyd's insurers was accused of a "thinly veiled attempt to reduce London brokerage levels" last week as the war of words over broker remuneration broke out once again.