Best of Artemis, week ending 24th March 2013

The current pricing trend for new catastrophe bonds continues to surprise, and beat or compete closely with reinsurance pricing, with the latest example being Florida Citizens new Everglades Re Series 2013 near-halving in price on Friday. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email newsletter updates and for your convenience here are the ten most popular news articles from the last seven days on Artemis.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 24th March 2013:

1. As ILS investors compete with traditional reinsurers will they stay the course?
   One of the hot topics at the recent SIFMA Insurance-and-Risk-Linked Securities (IRLS) conference in New York was the increasing competition that ILS and third-party investor sources of reinsurance capacity are posing to traditional reinsurers.
2. Texas Windstorm Insurance Association considers and rejects cat bonds again for 2013
   The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) has once again been considering the use of catastrophe bonds as part of its reinsurance and risk transfer arrangements in 2013.
3. ILS investment manager interview: Michael Stahel, LGT Insurance-Linked Strategies
   The first in a series of interviews with investment managers from high-profile insurance-linked securities funds, collateralized reinsurance entities and reinsurance-linked investment firms,in which we hope to reveal a little more detail on the individual manager’s experience and the firm’s specific investment strategy.
4. Fast capital? Welcome to the ‘new normal’
   In this timely article we discuss third-party investors increasing interest and growing influence in the insurance and reinsurance markets as something that insurers and reinsurers are going to have to get used to as a ‘new normal’.
5. Berkshire Hathaway providing capacity for Aon’s new Lloyd’s based sidecar
   Interesting news as an announcement comes from broker Aon saying that they have signed an agreement with Warren Buffett’s reinsurance giant Berkshire Hathaway which will see the two firms team up to bring sidecar style capacity to retail customers of the broker at Lloyd’s.
6. Stone Ridge successfully raises initial target assets for two ILS funds
   Stone Ridge Asset Management, a New York based investment firm launched last year by former Magnatar Capital co-head of portfolio management Ross Stevens, has successfully raised its initial target capital for its two insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance-linked investment funds, according to SEC documents.
7. Louisiana Citizens to consider another catastrophe bond, if the price is right
   With catastrophe bond rates seemingly near all-time lows it’s no surprise to hear that another of the U.S. state based property insurers of last resort plans to assess whether a cat bond could be cheaper than reinsurance at its next renewal.
8. Blue Capital Global Reinsurance Fund to raise more capital, issue more shares
   The Montpelier Re backed Blue Capital Global Reinsurance Fund will look to pursue a series of placings of new shares in the company to accommodate new investor inflows as part of a fund-raising push.
9. Merna Re IV cat bond upsizes to $300m, prices at lower end of expected range
   U.S. primary insurer State Farm’s latest catastrophe bond has seemingly been successful and has upsized during the marketing phase and pricing has dropped to the lower end of the suggested range.
10. Pricing environment tempts Nationwide into another Caelus Re cat bond
    U.S. insurer Nationwide Mutual’s Caelus Re 2013-1 catastrophe bond has only just come to market this month yet the insurer is returning to the cat bond market already for a Caelus Re 2013 Ltd. (Series 2013-2) issuance.

This is by no means every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular among our readers. To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis subscribe to our weekly email newsletter update.

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