Len Quick

An action in New York to hold Goldman Sachs and several former officers and directors of Bermuda-based Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings Ltd. liable for allegedly "squandering" $80 million of the fraudulently-operated insurance broker's corporate assets has failed. On February 19, 2008, Chief U. S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart M. Bernstein dismissed all of the core counts alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty against the Goldman Sachs and the D&O defendants in a complaint brought by the group's Bankruptcy Trustee, Richard O'Connell, at the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Goldman Sachs refused to pull the plug on one of the biggest frauds the insurance industry has ever known for fear it would de-rail the 137-year-old investment banker's own $3.66 billion IPO in May, 1999, it has been claimed.The extraordinary allegation appears in a civil complaint that was filed recently in the United States by the Bankruptcy Trustee of Bermuda-based broker AlphaStar Insurance Group Ltd., formerly known as Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings Ltd., and several of its subsidiaries and affiliates.

Collapsed broker AlphaStar Insurance Group may seek compensation from one of its founders, Nicholas Brown, over the alleged mismanagement of the company.In other news, the company has drastically revised a controversial bonus plan to pay bonuses totaling $1.6 million to

Letter to the Editor of OffshoreAlert from Stephen Crane, CEO of AlphaStar Insurance Group, formerly known as Stirling Cooke.

Bermuda-domiciled AlphaStar Insurance Group Ltd. and 11 of its subsidiaries have applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York. The group is seeking breathing room while it seeks buyers for its assets, including policy-issuing subsidiary Realm National Insurance Company, for which AlphaStar "is no longer able to provide capital".

Mark Cooke this month stepped down as CEO of Goldman Sachs-controlled Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings following the company's disastrous performance since going public in November, 1997. But the man promoted to temporarily replace him and steady the firm in the face of widespread fraud allegations was himself accused of impropriety with his previous employer, we can reveal. Len Quick, 57, who was previously the head of Stirling Cooke's North American operations, was elevated to Chief Operating Officer of the group and interim CEO until a permanent replacement for Cooke is found.