Best of Artemis, week ending 4th August 2013

We published 25 news stories in the last week, here are the ten most popular. As always, you can read every market news story and article here 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 4th August 2013:

1. RMS launch hurricane model v13, use for MetroCat Re risk analysis
   RMS has launched a new version of its North Atlantic hurricane model suite, version 13.0. The new version will give users the ability to fully analyse and quantify the risks from hurricane driven storm surge risks and the model has already been used in a catastrophe bond deal, the first storm surge cat bond MetroCat Re.
2. Nephila Capital adds Guy Swayne as firms tenth partner
   The largest asset manager in the insurance-linked securities and reinsurance-linked investment space with just over $7.89 billion of insurance-linked assets under management at the firm, Nephila Capital, has grown its senior team by one with the addition of Guy Swayne as a new partner.
3. SAC Re’s ratings under review on hedge fund SAC Capital connections
   SAC Re, the Bermuda based Class 4 reinsurance company backed by Steven A. Cohen, billionaire hedge fund manager and founder of the beleaguered hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LP, has officially had its financial strength and issuer credit ratings placed under review with negative implications by A.M. Best.
4. XL plan ILS funds and collateralized reinsurance for Stone Point venture
   Global insurance and reinsurance firm XL Group announced a new venture it was launching with reinsurance focused private equity firm Stone Point Capital LLC to create an investment manager in insurance-linked securities and reinsurance-linked investments. More details emerged during last week.
5. Insurance-linked securities capacity here to stay: Hiscox CEO & Chairman
   Both the Chairman, Robert Childs, and CEO, Bronek Masojada, of Bermuda headquartered insurance and reinsurance group Hiscox have said that they see insurance-linked securities (ILS) capacity as a permanent and growing feature of the wider insurance and reinsurance market.
6. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reinsures Irish healthcare claims
   High profile investor Warren Buffett’s reinsurance firm Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has entered into another large reinsurance transaction in the life & health sector. Berkshire Hathaway will reinsure $923m (€700m) of healthcare related claims for Irish state health insurer VHI.
7. Insurance-linked securities funds performance hit by Euro floods in June
   The month of June saw insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds returns impacted by the major flooding event which struck Central European countries with some of the worst floods in recent memory. The event dragged the average return of ILS funds in June down to flat or 0.00%, as measured by the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index.
8. Third Point Re increases IPO offering to $345m
   Third Point Re, the Bermuda domiciled reinsurer backed by Third Point LLC hedge fund owner Dan Loeb, has increased the offering size of its long-awaited IPO to a maximum of $345m.
9. Longevity hedging market could hit capacity crunch: PwC
   Analysis from PwC questions the ability and capacity of traditional reinsurers to support the potential growth of the longevity hedging market over the next few years.
10. MetroCat Re completes at $200m. MTA pleased, but may have liked more
    The MetroCat Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) catastrophe bond, which is the first cat bond in the markets history to bring storm surge risk alone in a transaction to insurance-linked securities investors, has completed successfully at $200m, received its final rating and the notes and program have listed in Bermuda.

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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