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.

Faced with a slew of expected lawsuits following the loss of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Transocean has moved to limit its liability to the $27mn value of the drilling unit.

The Florida property catastrophe market is facing an "unmitigated disaster" if a major hurricane along the lines of Katrina hits this year, according to Rod Fox, CEO of reinsurance broker TigerRisk Partners.

Think that property cat reinsurance is a short-tail class? It might be time to think again because the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) is selling $693mn in bonds - apparently to pay for claims for the heavy 2004-05 years.

The Obama administration will need to rethink its proposals to eliminate the $250mn federal backstop for those that provide terrorism risk.

With a stellar cast assembled for an audience of 250 in New York last week, InsiderScope was a unique opportunity to connect with the zeitgeist of the (re)insurance industry. Here are just a few snippets of wisdom, observation and reflection from the day...

Record low valuations mean that wide-scale merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the property casualty (P&C) (re)insurance sector is unlikely in the near-term - despite the current soft phase of the market cycle that has historically been a catalyst for deals.

The fate of the (re)insurance cycle is in the hands of industry leaders, according to industry legend Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

Lloyd's syndicates have almost $60mn of exposure to the Aban Pearl gas rig loss off the coast of Venezuela, with Argenta leading the slip, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

The Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 that crashed on 12 May while attempting to land at Tripoli International Airport had a hull value of $124mn, according to market sources.

Senior management of energy mutual Aegis are mulling strategy and taking cover this week against the benign backdrop of Casablanca, as storms continue to rage in the energy markets.

The major Lloyd's (re)insurers are continuing to expand their international operations, in part at the expense of their London business.

Lloyd's underwriting veteran Roger Field has been appointed to the board of Omega Underwriting Agents Ltd, the Lloyd's managing agent of Omega Insurance Holdings, The Insurance Insider has learned.