November 2008/1

Ratings agency Fitch Ratings assigned Distressed Recovery (DR) ratings to the $300mn unwrapped tranches of beleaguered Scottish Re’s $2.1bn XXX reserve life securitisation Ballantyne Re. The DR

The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) has a claims-paying shortfall of around 50 percent of its insurance obligations, with access to liquidity dryingup in the credit crisis, according to mar

Swiss Re and the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) closed a weather derivatives contract in October to hedge against loss of maize crops as a result of drought in Malawi.

Reinsurance broker Carvill expects exchange-traded catastrophe futures to be “one of the better investment areas” for (re)insurance companies, as the financial crisis rocks the sector.

Inter-dealer broker Vyapar Capital Partners LLC has launched a new catastrophe derivative product, aimed at establishing a forward market for reinsurance pricing. The instrument, called a Swaption, w

Dedicated ILS investor Leadenhall Capital Partners LLP has increased seed capital from London market (re)insurer Amlin plc to $75mn from the original $50mn and is ramping up efforts to attract third

Modelling firm Risk Management Solutions (RMS) almost doubled its initial estimate for industry losses from Hurricane Ike to a range of $13bn to $21bn last month – making it the third most expe

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded four cat bonds guaranteed by failed investment bank Lehman Brothers in October, signalling further contagion of the financial sector crisis in

Five more core positions have been announced in the newly re-structured investment banking group at merged broking firm Aon Benfield, Trading Risk can reveal. As previously reported by our sister pub

Insurance linked securities (ILS) issuance in the first ten months of 2008 stands at just under $3bn – little more than half the $5.4bn issuance for the same period in 2007 – as the downg

Four cat bonds guaranteed by failed investment bank Lehman Brothers have had “limited trading” in the secondary market at “distressed levels”, according to dealers. Tranches o

October is set to be the busiest month of the year for secondary trading of cat bonds, as the global financial crisis spills over into the insurance linked securities (ILS) sector. Broker-dealer Swis