By agreeing to evaluate the terms of the amalgamation deal and pushing the shareholder votes further back, reinsurance firms PartnerRe and AXIS Capital are acknowledging that their transaction is inferior, according to EXOR.

Reinsurance broker JLT Re has reported that its property catastrophe rate-on-line index for Florida saw an 8.5% decline at the June 2015 renewals, as year on year pricing pressure continued, although at a more moderated pace.

The AXA UK pension scheme has entered into a £2.8 billion longevity swap transaction, transferring the risk that members live longer than expected to Reinsurance Group of America (RGA Re), and covering around half the closed schemes total liabilities.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 12th July 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.

The chances of the current El Niño conditions becoming stronger and also lasting longer into next year have increased, according to the latest update from the U.S. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, who now give an 80% chance it could persist into Spring 2016.

As expected reinsurance firm PartnerRe and insurer and reinsurer AXIS Capital are now evaluating their options with respect to how they could enhance or improve their amalgamation agreement for the shareholders benefit.

The UK’s city and financial regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority unit of the Bank of England, has launched a series of robust stress tests for general insurers which could produce telling and interesting results for reinsurance, ILS and catastrophe bonds.

Category 4 Typhoon Chan-hom is barreling towards the China coast, targeting a landfall somewhere to the south of Shanghai. Chan-hom looks set to be among the strongest typhoon’s ever to strike that area of the country, with its storm surge potential looking ominous.