October 2007/6

HSBC Insurance has launched a Dublin-based reinsurer to accept risks from the parent company's banking customers.

Ark Syndicate Management, the private equity backed Lloyd's insurer formed in March from a team of senior underwriters who resigned from Aspen Insurance Holdings last year...

Advent, the quoted EC3 reinsurer, has said it is exposed to a potential small loss from Lloyd's decision to invest in Mainsail II, the stricken structured investment vehicle (SIV).

Willis Group Holdings improved both its top and bottom lines in its third quarter results, which were published last week.

Despite a drop in gross written premiums for the third quarter of 2007, US commercial lines insurer WR Berkley reported net income of $180mn or 93 cents per share, buoyed by a...

Bermudian reinsurers Everest Re and PartnerRe both reported third quarter results last week comfortably ahead of analysts' estimates after benefiting from this year's low catastrophe losses.

It may have been another benign year for US hurricanes, but IPCRe's international book means it has inevitably taken a number of hefty non-US catastrophe losses, not least from the UK summer floods.

Deccan Value Advisors LP, the hedge fund which specialises in buying firms that look under-priced, has continued to build its stake in the UK quoted reinsurance intermediary, Benfield Group.

Bermudian (re)insurer XL Capital dismissed rumours of significant sub-prime related losses in its financial and professional lines portfolio last week, stating that indeed the crisis provided "an attractive opportunity" for the class.

The four-month trial of three former Independent Insurance Group plc (IIG) executives ended with a successful conviction for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and a total of 14 years in jail sentences last week.

Leading US congressman Barney Frank has sent two bills to the Senate proposing the extension of the Terrorism Risk Act and the flood insurance programme in anticipation of the upper house’s stalling on the legislation.

The threat of "economic populism" is one of the greatest challenges facing the US insurance industry, according to Property Casualty Insurers Association of America's (PCI) president and CEO David Sampson.