Archive for February, 2009

Willow Re has officially defaulted on it’s payment which was due on the 2nd February. They had a 5 day grace period to come up with the payment but now A.M. Best reports that they haven’t managed to come up with the full interest payment due. Willow Re intends to pay about 95% of the […]

Six months ago I wrote about the impending return of an insurance exchange to New York. Eric Dinallo, New York Insurance Superintendent, had discussed his wish to resurrect the exchange in Manhattan and to attract the worlds biggest insurers and reinsurers back to New York with the promise of capital markets trading. Now it appears […]

Reading the 10Q report from Star Gas Partners LP today leaves one with the impression that there is something wrong with their weather risk management cover. They mention the effects of weather on their bottom line both through adverse effects and changes in supply and demand so you’d assume they have a robust risk management […]

CME Group has announced today that it is expanding its suite of weather products to include the Australian cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It’s the first time they’ve supported trading of weather products in Australia. The contracts will go on sale on the 23rd February and include temperature based products of heating and cooling […]

Guy Carpenter have published a briefing on the catastrophe bond market in 2008 on their www.gccapitalideas.com blog (a fantastic effort at blogging from a large corporation by the way, I suggest you all read it regularly). We hope that this is just a warm up to their annual catastrophe bond market report which usually gets […]

It’s become apparent that Allstate‘s Willow Re catastrophe bond has been downgraded again by Standard & Poor’s due to a notice from Allstate that it is going to default on it’s scheduled interest payment. The rating on Willow Re Ltd.’s Class B 2007-1 series notes has been downgraded to ‘D’ from ‘CC’. An interest payment […]

The southeast of Britain has seen the heaviest falls of snow for 18 years overnight with much more forecast to come over the course of the day. Public transport is non-existent, even in the capital city London, and millions of workers have not made it into their offices and shops today. The Federation of Small […]