Best of Artemis, week ending 19th April 2015

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 19th April 2015, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 19th April 2015:

1. EXOR bids $6.4B for PartnerRe, to get into reinsurance
   Interesting news as EXOR, an investment company owned by the Italian Agnelli family (behind Fiat Chrysler), have launched a $6.4 billion counter bid to buy reinsurance firm PartnerRe, gate crashing the merger of AXIS Capital and PartnerRe. PartnerRe’s second largest shareholder also said this week that it prefers the EXOR bid.

2. Tony Ursano resigns from Willis Capital Markets & Advisory
   Tony Ursano the CEO of insurance and reinsurance broker Willis Group’s capital markets, M&A and insurance-linked securities (ILS) unit, Willis Capital Markets & Advisory, has resigned after six years leading the unit. It later became clear that Ursano is to join TigerRisk.

3. 2015 Atlantic hurricane season forecasts well below averages
   Forecasts for 2015 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season activity remain well below both long-term and more recent historical averages, suggesting another low impact year for the U.S. coastline, at least in terms of storm numbers.

4. Florida Hurricane Cat Fund approved to buy $1B of reinsurance cover
   The Florida Cabinet’s State Board of Administration and Governor Scott have now approved the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) to buy $1 billion of private reinsurance coverage, from a combination of traditional and collateralized reinsurance. The 2015 risk transfer will not include cat bonds though.

5. Expect AXIS to increase its bid for PartnerRe: KBW analysts
   Analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said that they expect AXIS Capital to increase its bid for PartnerRe, after yesterday’s surprise news that Italian investment holdings company EXOR had tabled a $130 per share offer, a 16% premium on the valuation of PartnerRe from the AXIS deal.

6. Further diversification away from cat bonds expected in ILS: Report
   The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is expected to continue to diversify itself away from more traditional catastrophe bonds, with continued growth of collateralised reinsurance expected and a gradual push into new perils and emerging markets.

7. TWIA to lower Alamo Re 2014 cat bond attachment probability at reset
   The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) is set to lower the attachment probability of its $400m Alamo Re Ltd. (Series 2014-1) catastrophe bond at the annual reset, in order to slot the cover it provides between the two tranches of its new Alamo Re Ltd. (Series 2015-1) offering.

8. Rewire opens online marketplace for catastrophe risk & ILS to users
   Rewire Holdings LLC, a firm that launched in September 2014 aiming to increase efficiency in the syndication of catastrophe risk to reinsurance and capital markets, has today opened its online ILS and catastrophe bond marketplace to users for the first time.

9. Schroders launches Flexible Cat Bond fund, with cat bond lite angle
   Investment management group Schroders has launched a new catastrophe bond fund strategy today. The Schroder IF Flexible Cat Bond fund has a mandate that will allow investments in private cat bonds, or cat bond lites, as well as 144A cat bond issues.

10. European windstorm Niklas losses in the billions: Aon Benfield
    Adverse weather events consisting of hail, heavy rain, snow and intense windstorms such as Niklas devastated parts of Europe during March, causing expected economic and insured losses in the billions, according to Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting unit.

This is by no means every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago. There were 28 new articles published in the last week. To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis and never miss a story subscribe to our weekly email newsletter which is delivered every Wednesday.

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