October 2005/2

Giant insurer American International Group (AIG) has upped the ante in its increasingly acrimonious dispute with former chief executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, by taking legal action in an effort to seize $20bn of its own shares from his control...

Despite the estimated £1.4bn ($2.5bn) blow from Hurricane Katrina, Lloyd’s still expects to make a full year profit in 2005. This was one of the messages from Lloyd’s first ever interim results published 5 October which show a profit of £1.38bn for...

As the industry begins to question the reliability of catastrophe loss modellers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, there is still great variation on the estimates of the losses.

Following the news that the first Hurricane Katrina lawsuit had been filed against insurers in the US (see Insider Week No. 191), law firms have begun to brief insurance clients in earnest over the challenges they will face in the likely deluge of...

Fundraising total tops $3.5bn, with further moves imminent Although a fresh wave of (re)insurance start-ups is not expected to wash onto the shores of Bermuda, the island has once again led the way in capital raising, as the industry responds to...

Despite warnings that Hurricane Katrina could trigger CAT bonds it seems likely that most will be unaffected. It seemed that a number of CAT bonds were under threat as Katrina made its way across the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) as a Category Five storm.

To avoid the threat of downgrades, Bermuda’s (re)insurers are being forced to tap the capital markets Bermuda’s (re)insurers are rushing to the capital markets to repair the damage Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have wreaked to their balance sheets and...

Kiln Underwriting has confirmed that it will write no further wind-exposed Gulf of Mexico (GOM) risks for the remainder of the 2005 hurricane season. In an interview with The Insurance Insider, Charles Franks, active underwriter on Syndicate 510...

Shares in Bermudian insurer have dropped alarmingly by over 30 percent this month in the wake of substantial Katrina losses and poor results from the first-half of 2005. At the beginning of September shares in Goshawk were trading at over 36p on...

The growing frequency of downgrade clauses could trigger a run on the bank if the rating agencies react with a slew of negative actions. The threat of a Post-Katrina liquidity crunch has grown as the rating agencies have become more aggressive...

MMC’s London based wholesale arm Price Forbes is in advanced management buy-out talks, The Insurance Insider can reveal. The move follows New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer’s investigations into the industry which have led to MMC’s rivals Aon...

The former MMC chief executive Jeffrey Greenberg has established a private equity investment company Aquiline Investment Group that will back insurance and financial services companies, The Insurance Insider can reveal.