September 2004/4

Wellington chief buys £500,000 shares Wellington Underwriting’s new chief executive Preben Prebensen acquired almost £500,000 worth of his company’s shares earlier this month.

Rating agency Fitch has assigned Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) ratings to six Japanese life insurance companies.

Despite recent suggestions from the likes of Swiss Re that capital markets will increasingly bear the burden of large-scale risk, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) believes the securitisation market is serving as a complementary form of risk transfer, and not a sub

AXA Re Property and Casualty Company (AXA Re P&C) became the first ratings casualty of the trio of storms hitting the South Eastern corner of the United States as AM Best revealed today (20 September) its decision to downgrade the reinsurer’s financial st

Ratings agency AM Best has affirmed its syndicate rating of "A" (Excellent) and issuer credit rating (ICR) of “a+” on Hardy Syndicate 382, both ratings issued with a stable outlook.

Following on from last month’s 25 percent share price fall on news of deterioration from its run-off US legacy exposures, Lloyd’s insurer SVB released mixed results in its latest interims.

A difficult year for motor specialist Cox continued last week with a set of interims that saw a halving of pre-tax profits to £13.7mn from £28.3mn for the same period in 2003.

Evidence of continuing hard market conditions came with last week's interims from Lloyd's specialist insurer Hiscox which revealed record operating profits of £61.7mn, an increase of 134 percent.

“Continuing positive market conditions” have helped Catlin Group almost double its net income from $50.7mn to $95.8mn in its first ever interims as a public company.

Chaucer Underwriting became the latest Lloyd’s insurer to celebrate the recent, strong underwriting conditions by posting a 32 percent increase in pre-tax profits to £18.8mn for the first half of the year.

Political posturing over proposals for a compensation fund for asbestos victims stepped up last week as reprised negotiations between Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist renewed hopes that a solution may be in the pipeline.

The independent Lloyd’s broker Cooper Gay has recruited Nick Newman and Judy Benson to run its new US domestic treaty business.