November 2010/2

The future of Royal Palm Insurance has been cast into doubt after an acrimonious dispute with its founder Wallace "Locke" Burt ended in a $28mn arbitration defeat.

Failed investment bank Lehman Brothers' $250mn directors' and officers' (D&O) liability programme is rapidly being eroded by defence costs as the firm's bankruptcy filing rumbles on.

The ILS sector must innovate to compete with traditional players as the two markets encroach on each others' territory, according to speakers at the annual Trading Risk New York gathering last month.

Standard & Poor's (S&P) has posted a stable outlook on State Farm and RenRe's $100mn joint venture sidecar-style transaction Top Layer Re, matching a recent action on State Farm.

Scor is the latest (re)insurer to set up its own insurance-linked investment fund, setting aside $100mn of seed capital for a dedicated fund that will be known as Atropos.

Convergence executives are hopeful that recent revisions to AIR Worldwide's European windstorm risk model will be positive for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market.

Three new catastrophe bond issuances at the start of the third quarter included the first solo US thunderstorm bond from a sponsor new to the market.

The fiercely independent Hardy board and the management of would-be acquirer Beazley are battling for the hearts and minds of Hardy's key investors.

Buy-out firms Apollo and CVC reveal details of £865mn takeover

Commentators scrutinising the big corporate brokers' third-quarter results for good news will have been buoyed by signs of recovery after a series of challenging quarters.

As Q3 financials filtered through in late October and early November, individual company loss estimates for the New Zealand earthquake began to mount.

The day of reckoning when reserve redundancies run dry is still some way off - at least that's the picture that emerged in Q3 results of the group of Bermuda-rooted (re)insurers The Insurance Insider has been tracking