General

The City is getting to be a cold and windy place for many nowadays. In homage, here is this Holga-ised shot taken from my office, with that Berlin-in-the-60s feel about it. Brrrr.

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As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of [...]

A lecture given by Dr Lawson Brigham At the Institute of Marine Engineering Science & Technology (IMarEST) 8 September 2008 Please note that these are not authorised notes, but simply the result of my jottings at great speed during this fascinating talk. I may not have taken certain things down entirely accurately, though I think the broad thrust [...]

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In his 2008 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett has a charming little story about the problems of IBNR and the known unknowns (ahem): We also include a large reserve for losses that occurred before yearend but that we have yet to hear about. Sometimes, the insured itself does not know that [...]

When is the BBB insurance market going to wake up to the claims they have against other parties in the sub-prime mess? Guys, did you watch Panorama the other night? Or back last Autumn. Have you been pondering these issues? Do you want to get some money back? Please get in touch when you [...]

First off, I shouldn’t complain too much, as I do get a listing as one of the Leading Individuals in Insurance & Reinsurance Litigation, which is nice even if it does make me sound like a luxury hotel. However, one should treat industry directories with caution. Legal 500 have some oddities this year. [...]

For those of you who recall the shock of reading ‘Neuromancer’ and who think that the future can be predicted with some measure of certainty, here’s a bit of a wake-up call from William Gibson: We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of [as] technology [...]

OK, you can all stop cheering now. Yes, you, at the back there. Oh well, all right then, but only for a bit. According to a Telegraph interview, Professor Alan Blinder, of Princeton, believes that within the next generation, a whole host of ’safe’ professions–including lawyers, economists and accountants–will have been ‘offshored’ to India, China [...]

While I hesitated for a second to put this into a blog ostensibly about reinsurance, insurance and the law, one of the things that has always appealed to me about the insurance world was its close connection with the intimate realities of the everyday world. We may all be dealing with high finance and [...]

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