Europe Intelligence Wire articles from May 2004

Europe Intelligence Wire archives from May 2004

News Analysis - Big Apple pie.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Adrian Leonard. Victory has been declared by pro-collateralists in the long-running 'credit for reinsurance' debate, but their engagement with tireless anti-collateralist forces is far from over. The...

News Analysis - Bermuda's billion-dollar club.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Adrian Leonard. As Bermuda's crop of new (re)insurers reported breakneck growth and astonishing income figures (Reinsurance, April 2004), some of them criticised established companies for failing to manage...

Reweb - Swiss Re recovers from its 2002 losses.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Swiss Re has recovered from its 2002 losses to post increased profits for 2003. The company, which made a loss of SFr 91m ($65m) over 2002, announced that net income for 2003 had risen substantially to SFr 1.7bn....

Reweb - Lloyd's urges caution over strong results.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Lloyd's of London has posted a profit of GBP1.9bn for 2003, up 127% on the GBP834m it recorded for 2002. The results mark the second year that the market has posted a profit, following five successive years of...

Reweb - IAIS presses for transparency.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has announced a new framework for the collection of statistics that it hopes will enhance transparency in the reinsurance sector. The framework covers the...

Reweb - US Congress hears Rims testimony.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Janice Ochenkowski, vice-president of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (Rims), has testified before Congress on the need for a streamlined insurance purchasing process in the US. Appearing before the House...

Reweb - Colonial creates reinsurance arm.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Bermuda-based Colonial Insurance Group is to set up its own reinsurance arm. The new company will be used to self-insure some of the company's catastrophe insurance issued in the Caribbean region. It will be...

Reweb - London P&I Club sails ahead.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) The London P&I Club has announced an increase in the size of its entered fleet during the 2004 P&I renewal season. The club grew by around two million gross tons (GT), bringing the club entry to almost 34m GT. In...

Reweb - Silverstein barred from WTC trial.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) World Trade Centre (WTC) leaseholder Larry Silverstein has been banned from attending the remainder of the ongoing trial over the insurance of the twin towers. Southern District of New York Judge Michael Mukasey...

Reweb - New Fitch report on US P&C.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) The US property and casualty market has seen a second clear year of improvement, according to a new report from Fitch. The report said the industry's combined ratio had fallen by 6.9% to 98%, generating a 10%...

Reweb - Waves wash new Sompo product.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Sompo Japan Insurance has created what it claims to be Japan's first weather derivative product against high waves. The company said the product has been designed for corporations involved in the tourism, fishing and...

Reweb - Savannah Re announces new deal.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Savannah Re has concluded an agreement to provide underwriting services to Platinum Underwriters Reinsurance and the Glencoe Group. The company will underwrite property, facultative and programme reinsurance risks...

Reweb - PCI applauds NAIC over aliens.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) The Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) has backed the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' (NAIC) decision to table consideration of an approved list of alien reinsurers. Over recent...

News round-up - Allianz looks to China.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Allianz Group is committing itself to expanding its business presence in China. On a recent visit to Shanghai, Michael Diekmann, chairman and chief executive of the group, said Allianz was committed to building a...

Re-ratings - Moody's lowers debt ratings.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Moody's has lowered the debt ratings of Travelers Property Casualty. The rating agency lowered the company's senior debt rating from 'A2' (good) to 'A3' (good) and its junior subordinated debt rating from 'A3' (good) to...

Re-ratings - AM Best affirms Top Layer Re's rating.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) AM Best has affirmed Bermuda-based Top Layer Re's financial strength rating of 'A+' (superior), and has announced that the outlook is stable. The rating agency said the rating reflected the substantial amount of support...

Technology - Sharpening up your business intelligence.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Paul Latarche, director at Moore Stephens. Recent years have witnessed a global trend towards a more decentralised business structure for large (re)insurers. In particular, the merger and acquisition trend...

Comment - Will profits affect reform.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Isobel McCalman, Editor. It was hard for the team presenting the Lloyd's 2003 results not to look a little pleased with themselves. Essentially they had nothing but good news to report. Chairman Lord Levene,...

Comment - Relationships are vital.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Henry Keeling, chief executive of reinsurance operations, XL Capital. Most marriages can benefit from the services of a third-party counsellor from time-to-time and this is especially true in the...

Interview - Leadership is a standard.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Greg Maciag, chief executive of the Association for Co-operative Operations Research and Development (Acord), is raring to go: "I would have to say that in my 27 years of experience, I have never been as optimistic as I...

Acord/Loma Forum preview - Las Vegas uncovered.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Acord and Loma have this year joined forces to provide a business and technology conference that aims to cover all the opportunities and issues facing the insurance industry, including globalisation, information...

Technical Report: Life - It's all in the genes.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Keith Sankey. While there is no denying that the science of genetics made rapid strides through the 1990s and into the current millennium, movement was faster in some fields than in others. Progress in the...

Technical Report: Life - Death is greatly exaggerated.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Vic Wyman. You may have thought that one of the major concerns for life (re)insurers was the likelihood of policyholders dying. Yet the focus is changing, suggests Dr Wolf Becke, executive board member...

Run-off - Run-off runs up.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Marc Jones. There was a time when business that went into run-off was regarded being consigned to the outer darkness, seldom to see the light of profit, let alone day, again. But times are changing, as the...

Market Report: Asia/Pacific/Middle East - South Korea on reform path.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Peter Falush. South Korea's non-life business - now the world's tenth largest market - was worth W20 180bn ($17.9 bn) in direct premiums in fiscal* 2002 (fiscal year, ending 31 March of the following year)....

London: Regulation - Players get closer.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Vic Wyman. Ah yes, you remember that idea of cedants paying more the higher the rating of the reinsurer by rating agencies. The idea, often suggested wistfully by highly-rated reinsurers themselves, has been...

Takaful insurance - A new dawn for the takaful market.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Jeremy Golden. Until recently, takaful - insurance based on Islamic principles - was seen by many in non-Islamic countries as a type of business unlikely to yield significant profits and with little relevance...

London: Market - Where next for the hard market?
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Robert CB Miller. The international insurance industry is cyclical in a way that is different from other industries. Although the amplitude of the cycle is much the same, it has a predictable character which...

London: Business efficiency - Taking the road to business efficiency.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Isobel McCalman. Research carried out on behalf of Xchanging*, last month, into the attitudes of the London insurance market towards outsourcing, reveals that there is still a wide spectrum of views on its...

London: Operation - London faces ticking clock.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Marc Jones. In the past, London has always been seen as a highly professional and efficient place to write (re)insurance business. But as other areas of the world evolve and promise equal or even greater...

Regulation - Terrorism - Brokers call for Tria extension.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Leading US brokers are calling for the extension of the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (Tria), according to a new survey. The survey, which was carried out by the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers (CIAB),...

London: Aviation - Sky-high savings.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Eric Alexander. Aviation insurers were pleased to record that 2003 has turned out to be one of the safest years ever for commercial air transport. Last year there were only 14 jet aircraft total losses, a...

Regulation - Reporting Standards - S&P expects IFRS shortcomings.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Standard & Poor's Rating Services (S&P) has announced that it is expecting "notable shortcomings" in the forthcoming Phase I of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on insurance contracts. S&P said...

Regulation - International - US urges Kampo reform.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has issued a white paper on what it describes as violations of the general agreement on trade in services by Japan in its dealings with postal insurance giant Kampo. ...

Claims - Weather - Asian dust storms mount.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Scientists studying the dust storms that affect north-east Asia have warned of potential health hazards to the region's population. Dust and sand storms have been causing misery in the area for several centuries, as...

Claims - Weather - New US drought research.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) A new study has linked large-scale long-lasting droughts in the US to oceanic temperature fluctuations. The study, put together by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), suggests that the present drought in the...

Claims - Risk - Think-tank studies new risks to global economy.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) A new international think-tank has been set up to look at the risks posed by the global economy. The think-tank has been created by the UK-based International Cooperative & Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF), in...

Risk: Crop insurance - Reap what you sow.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Corn growers in the US consider crop insurance one of their most important tools to manage risk, according to the results of a survey by the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA). Farmers, geographically dispersed...

Legal - Food for thought.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Nicola Reid, a solicitor in the insurance and reinsurance department In Part 1 of this article we described the factual background to the judgement of Mr Justice Thomas and, in this part, we make a few...

Legal - Following mixed signals.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Peter Chaffetz and Steven Schwartz. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently took a stand in the controversy over the application of the follow-the-settlements doctrine to cedants' allocation...

Business - Creating a storm.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Adrian Leonard. Modelling is an obvious part of the back-to-basics prescription for catastrophe reinsurers. As Aon Re explains in its recent review of the 2004 renewal, "modelling underpinned the ratings, and...

People - Appointment at Aon Re International.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Richard Posgate has been appointed group operations director at Aon Re International. Mr Posgate, who joined Aon in 1995 when he helped to establish Aon Re UK, will be responsible for structuring the organisation around...

People - Appointment at Aon Capital Advisory.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Aon has launched a specialist team, Aon Capital Advisory, offering a range of advisory services tailored specifically for underwriting and insurance-related entities. The team, which was formerly Heath Lambert Capital...

Regulation - FSA Proposals - Research shows insurers could miss capital requirements.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Almost a fifth of general insurance companies would currently fail to meet the FSA's new proposal for enhanced capital requirements (ECR), according to a new study from Tillinghast. The company's research indicates...

Claims - Legal - Slave descendants to sue Lloyd's.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Lloyd's of London is to be sued for damages by a group of US citizens who claim descent from slaves. The group of ten plaintiffs are suing for compensation as a result of Lloyd's allegedly underwriting the ships used...

Reweb - Hannover Re posts profit for 2003.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Hannover Re has posted a EUR732.1m profit for 2003, a rise of 55% on the EUR470.9m it made over 2002. The company said gross written premiums were down 9% from EUR12.5bn in 2002 to EUR11.3bn in 2003, with the fall being...

Comment - Run-off is set for take-off.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Geoffrey Bromley, president of Guy Carpenter International (ex Managing run-off is one of the fastest growing sectors of the insurance business. What began in the 1970s as a niche business has matured into...

London: Outsourcing - Ringing the changes.
May 1, 2004... (From Reinsurance) Byline: Jeff Ward, a director at TriSystems, the specialist supplier of IT A few months back (Reinsurance, August 2003) I suggested that the gathering momentum of outsourcing in the London insurance market would...

Editor's letter - If you can't be sure of Shell ...
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Sir Philip Watts is no Robert Maxwell. Shell is no Mirror Group. But the damage caused to shareholding pension funds by the share-price slump following the admission that oil reserves had been seriously...

Insight - Ready Aim Fire.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Anthony Harrington. With nine new issues on the main London stock market so far this year, and more than 43 deals on AIM, one could be forgiven for asking, which is the main market, exactly? Both...

On the move - Ellis retirement is Tucker's luck.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) HBOS group finance director Mike Ellis is set to retire at the end of the year after 17 years of service. Ellis joined Halifax in 1987 as treasurer and held a number of senior roles in treasury, retail and...

Insight - Whose turn next?
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Richard Willsher. Parmalat is likely to go down in history as Italy's - and probably Europe's - Enron. Its impact will reverberate through political and financial circles for years to come, and not...

ASB WANTS IAS 39.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Peter Williams. Is it a strong signal of support for the international harmonisation of accounting standards, an admission that there is no longer such a thing as UK GAAP, or another move which will...

Between a rock and hard place.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Peter Williams. There is a growing gap between the standard of the financial reporting process as set out in codes and guides, and the day-to-day reality in Britain's plcs. The inability or...

Show us the money.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Robert Bruce. Oil companies and banks are easy targets for the popular press. Even in bad years, their profits can always be made to sound astronomical. The skill with which the tabloids...

FSA and the Equitable.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) The Financial Services Authority said in a statement that it had decided not to investigate fully the conduct of Roy Ranson, former CEO of Equitable Life. The FSA said that the only penalties it could impose were...

Easy access for all.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Tom Berry. There are more than two million blind or partially sighted people in the UK, and nine million people with hearing problems. One in four households have a disabled family member. Why then...

IT's a steal.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) One-third of large UK companies suffered a hacking attempt on their website in the past 12 months, according to the DTI/PwC information security breaches survey. Around half of UK businesses are concerned about...

Believing in life after debt.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Dennis Turner. Nothing has happened since the Budget to undermine the confidence the Chancellor expressed about the UK's short-term prospects. Inflation remains low, unemployment keeps falling and GDP...

The Financial Director interview - Change of Gear.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Sarah Perrin. Three-times turnaround king Richard Pennycook has exchanged unpredictability for stability, and crisis talks with bankers for expansion planning. As group finance director of RAC plc, he...

Cover story - A Tale of two Cities.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Deloitte partner Neil Wood is the FD of the bid team trying to win the 2012 Olympic Games for London. David Leather was the FD of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Here, Leather talks about his experience...

IAS - Measure for Measure.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Jules Stewart and Andrew Sawers. Starting next year, City investment analysts will face a complex new toolkit for scrutinising company accounts. With the introduction of International Accounting...

Data protection - Protect and Survive.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Malcolm Wheatley. The debate over data security has moved on over the past few years. Not long ago, for example, intrusions from hackers were seen as the greatest threat to business data security....

Briefing - M&A - Making the most out of a merger.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) James Davies and Alex Moss of Close Brothers Corporate Finance detail the key stages any FD should consider for a merger, acquisition or disposal opportunity. 1. Initial steps in the process - Assess the...

Briefing - Corporate governance - How top Shell execs found themselves over a barrel.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Following Shell's disclosure in January 2004 that it had miscategorised 3.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of its "proved" reserves, the group appointed law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell to conduct an...

Outsourcing - Eastern Promise is a Western lure.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) More than half of FTSE-100 companies contract some of their information technology and business processes to outside organisations. A study by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young suggests that one in five of these...

Climate change - Shareholders act to cut emissions.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Notwithstanding the uncertain fate of the Kyoto Protocol, climate change regulations continue to take shape around the globe, even in countries that have not ratified it. There is recognition within business and...

Financial directions - UK companies top added value report.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) The 2004 Value Added Scorecard, published by the Department of Trade and Industry, looked at the wealth created by the top 600 European companies (including 165 from the UK) and, separately, the top 800 UK...

Financial directions - Employees choose to work long hours.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Most UK employees are voluntarily working more than 48 hours a week, as opposed to being forced to by their employer, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The research...

UK plc sees profits soar, while IPOs continue to rise.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Profitability on the up UK corporate profitability has risen to 12.3% in 2003, up from 11.4% in 2002, according to National Statistics. Manufacturing companies recorded the highest net return in four years...

Financial bites.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) "Each row over pay, and there seems to be one every week, probably sends another half-dozen young, ambitious managers down the route into private equity, or prompts the seriously ambitious to work in America." ...

Financial directions - Economic recovery falls short of forecasts.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Byline: Graeme Johnston. Economic background Data on the economy in the US tended to fall short of forecasts in March. This was in contrast to the experience of recent months. In particular, the...

Extraordinary Items - So much for the exact fare.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) You wait ages for some bus company executives to resign, and then what? Three go all at once. So it was with the collapse of Mayflower at the end of March when the chief executive, the FD and a joint MD all...

Extraordinary Items - Text it like Beckham.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Dangerous things, celebrities. Especially when you pay them a lot of money to endorse your product. Those TV ads in which David Beckham sends glorious picture messages from sunny Spain back to his former team...

Extraordinary Items - And then there were three ...
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Welcome to the Big Three. Now that Ernst & Young has been banned by the US SEC from securing any new public company audit work for a period of six months, we find ourselves in a (brief) era in which there simply...

Extraordinary Items - Lean, Green, fit machine.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) ICAP FD Jim Pettigrew says he worries about having to mark-to-market a screenful of bombed-out securities prices if, say, rumours of an Alan Greenspan heart attack knock the markets on the last day of his...

Extraordinary Items - Greedy, mean and selfish.
May 1, 2004... (From Financial Director) Those crazy guys at personal investment website Motley Fool (www.fool.co.uk) have unearthed a 100-year-old Devil's Dictionary, which they say "provides decent proof that, by and large, people are greedy, mean and...

Czechs join EU.
May 1, 2004... (From Czech News Agency) PRAGUE, May 1 (CTK) - The Czech Republic joined the EU at midnight sharp and now it makes part of a community of 25 countries, which embraces almost half a billion people. The EU accession was approved by...

Klaus celebrates EU entry at Czech legendary hill Blanik.
May 1, 2004... (From Czech News Agency) LOUNOVICE POD BLANIKEM/BLANIK, Central Bohemia, May 1 (CTK) - President Vaclav Klaus celebrated the Czech Republic's EU entry at the legendary hill Blanik shortly after midnight. When this happened, he called...

Spidla welcomes EU among Praguers.
May 1, 2004... (From Czech News Agency) PRAGUE, May 1 (CTK) - The ancient Old Town astronomical clock counted the seconds remaining to the Czech Republic's EU accession shortly before Saturday midnight. Praguers and tourists, who watched a concert of...

Antrim pool is making a splash.
May 1, 2004... (From Belfast Telegraph) Byline: Fiona McIlwaine Bigginsnewsdesk@belfasttelegraph.co.uk A SPECIAL swimming pool at Muckamore Abbey Hospital, Antrim, is a hit with more than just the residents with learning disabilities. ...

Fireworks explode over st vitus cathedral at prague castle to mark the historic accession of 10 countries to the eu at midnight.
May 1, 2004... (From Belfast Telegraph) Day of welcomes as 10 countries join EU By Mary Fitzgerald IN DUBLIN THOUSANDS of people from all over Europe converged on Dublin today to celebrate the historic accession of 10 countries to the EU....

Death sparks quad bike call.
May 1, 2004... (From Belfast Telegraph) By Claire Regan CALLS for a drastic tightening of legislation governing the use of quad bikes intensified today in the hope of preventing another tragedy similar to the death of Carrickfergus youngster Megan...

Reliant Robins on the starting grid.
May 1, 2004... (From Belfast Telegraph) Byline: Roy Winternewsdesk@belfasttelegraph.co.uk IF you are up at Nutts Corner direction this weekend, look out for Del Boy. No, not at the market - at the Nutt's Corner Oval. Today and tomorrow more...