April 2009
Insurance survey 2009: Insurers take cover to avoid capital crunch
The demise of AIG has inflicted an identity crisis on the insurance industry. But insurers face exposure to distressed assets, accounting and valuation issues and a potential shortage of capital. Sounds familiar? Helen Avery reports on how insurers believe they will avoid the same fate as the banks.
Insurers take cover to avoid capital crunch
Insurance survey: Global results
Insurance survey: Full results
Insurance survey: Use of alternative risk transfer
Insurance survey: Methodology
MOST LEADING INSURERS say they have little in common with the failed financial institution that AIG became. They’re right. But leading insurance executives should be more concerned about differentiating the industry from a banking sector in crisis.
In February, UK hedge funds Lansdowne Partners, and Odey Asset Management went short UK insurers. Lansdowne took a short position in Prudential worth about £10.5 million ($15.2 million), a £26.2 million short in Aviva, and further short positions in Legal & General and Old Mutual. Odey Asset Management took a £7.1 million short position in Legal & General. Before the introduction of UK regulation that states that short sales of financial stocks must be disclosed, such behaviour would have gone unnoticed.
But in an environment where...
More information on insurance survey
The rest of this article is only available to subscribers
If you are already a subscriber please log in now to view this article, by entering your username (email address) and password at the top right-hand side of this page.
If you are not a subscriber just subscribe today for full access to this article. You can do this either by clicking the link or calling +44 (0)207 779 8999.
If you are a trialist or subscriber, please enter your username and password at the top right-hand side of euromoney.com
Subscribers to Euromoney benefit from:
- 12 months access in print and online - on euromoney.com, read the latest issue early online, search for specific developments by region or sector, interrogate the results of Euromoney's benchmark polls, and view the archive dating back to 1996
- More than 30 specialist research guides free
- The results of Euromoney’s polls and surveys
- Tailored RSS news feeds direct to your desktop
- News delivered directly to your mobile device or PC
- Personalised email newsfeed of 'Top stories' and 'Breaking news'
Click here to subscribe