October 2011/2

The long-running saga over Credit Lyonnais' illegal takeover of the distressed Californian life insurer Executive Life took a further turn last week, after the French bank agreed to settle with an American International Group (AIG) subsidiary.

French insurer Axa has become the first sponsor to bring a cat bond issuance in the fourth quarter with a new Calypso Capital offering covering European wind risk.

Amid the swirling market turmoil on the continent, the UK Bank of England (BoE) has announced it will pump an extra £75bn into the economy by extending its quantitative easing (QE) programme, adding to the litany of challenges facing the UK insurance sector.

The cost of insuring against French (re)insurers defaulting has made the largest leap among European peers amid the uncertainty on the continent over sovereign debt holdings, according to pricing data compiled by Fitch.

Amlin's travails with the integration of ACI and its punishing international catastrophe losses do not justify the extent of the fall in the Lloyd's (re)insurer's share price over the last two months, analysts have said.

In the face of market criticism, Lloyd's performance management director Tom Bolt appeared to have struck a compromise over controversial proposals on offshore energy liability underwriting last week.

Estimated insured losses from two of this year's largest energy claims have increased significantly due to business interruption (BI) claims, it emerged last week.

Specialty insurer WR Berkley reported pre-tax catastrophe losses of $50mn-$60mn for the third quarter, including reinsurance recoveries and reinstatement premiums.

Bermudian (re)insurer Endurance has announced that it is expecting $99mn of cat losses in the third quarter - demonstrating that Hurricane Irene was not the only major nat cat loss in the third quarter.

Chartis is the lead market on the Asiana hull cover that is facing a $137mn claim following a crash involving a 747 cargo plane in July, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Munich Re, Berkshire Hathaway, PartnerRe, Swiss Re and Top Layer Re (RenRe) are likely to take upwards of one-third of the circa $1.75bn deterioration in the Zenkyoren loss estimate, according to filings from the cooperative.

Pre-tax profits at Arthur J Gallagher (UK) Limited fell by a quarter in 2010 as one-off costs associated with the acquisition of financial lines specialist FirstCity weighed on results.