May 2010/3

The fine art insurance market has been spared a potential EUR500mn mega-loss after the audacious theft of five masterpieces from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris last night (19 May), The Insurance Insider understands.

Financial/professional lines specialist Dual Corporate Risks has secured £5mn of capacity from AmTrust to write professional indemnity (PI) cover for insurance brokers.

Seven Lovells lawyers jump ship to Foley & Lardner...

Lloyd's and international (re)insurer Hardy saw its share price plummet almost 12 percent in afternoon trading today (17 May), as it surprised investors with the scale of its losses in the first quarter.

Fetooh Al Zayani, the former managing director of insurance and reinsurance at Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), has joined risk and insurance advisory group Kane.

The administrator of Quinn Insurance has confirmed there will be no return to the writing of UK professional indemnity (PI) insurance, as rumours of a rescue package from Anglo Irish Bank continue to percolate.

Bermudian-headquartered international specialty insurer Ironshore has completed a $250mn private debt offering of 8.50 percent senior notes, which become due in 2020.

Ratings agency Fitch assigned an A- insurer financial strength (IFS) rating to Validus Re last week.

Bermudian reinsurer PartnerRe revealed that Costas Miranthis will succeed Patrick Thiele as CEO at year-end.

The all-share merger between Bermudians Max Capital and Harbor Point completed last week to create $2bn gross written premium (re)insurer Alterra Capital.

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

International (re)insurers writing business in the US face $17bn in new taxes over the next decade if the Neal Bill is passed, according to an expert congressional committee.

Zurich Specialties London, Ace unit Illinois Union and Lloyd's insurer Novae will appeal after their action to revoke defence payments made to lawyers Milberg LLP for criminal counts linked to a kickback scheme was dismissed.

German legacy buyer Darag is involved in seven sets of run-off sale talks, just weeks after securing its first acquisition in the form of Hamburg-based insurer HVAG, The Insurance Insider understands.

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

US military insurer USAA is looking to place $500mn of risk into the capital markets through its 2010 Residential Re transaction, The Insurance Insider's sister publication Trading Risk revealed last week.

Catastrophe bond volumes passed the $1.5bn threshold last week, with the successful close and expansion of Chartis' Lodestone Re transaction.

Global broker Aon is one of the new sponsors of the McLaren Formula 1 team, it emerged at the weekend.

Aon Benfield has added facultative capacity for US terrorism risk through its FAConnect electronic placement platform, The Insurance Insider's sister publication Inside FAC revealed last week.

It has been a tough week for UK consolidator Towergate Partnership, after it withdrew plans to raise up to £665mn in a high-yielding debt issue while also reporting another operating loss.

The rating increases experienced in the airline insurance market have hit turbulence, with recent renewals showing insurers are now on average only securing single digit rises in lead hull and liability premium, despite the sector's heavy losses.

A lawsuit filed in Illinois over industry veteran Pat Ryan's audacious move this month to recruit over 100 employees from CRC Insurance Services claims that the staff left due to a conflict of interest at the US wholesale broking giant, and as such their "overreaching" restrictive covenants are void and unenforceable.

Schadenfreude is an overused term, but the Teutonism for feeling satisfaction or pleasure at someone else's misfortune was surely tailor made for the likely reaction of the insurance market to BP's situation following the Deepwater Horizon loss.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) revised its outlook on oil giant BP's captive insurer, Guernsey-based Jupiter Insurance, to negative from stable last week.