Quanta Capital

Mutual fund firm Fidelity has maintained its position as the single biggest investor group in the Bermuda insurance and reinsurance market.

One of Bermuda's worst-managed insurers - Quanta Capital Holdings Ltd. - has shelled out another massive severance package to a senior officer.In an SEC filing on July 27, 2006, the firm disclosed that it will pay $2 million to Michael J. Murphy, the firm's Deputy Chairman and former Chief Operating Officer. Murphy, 55, served as COO of Quanta Capital from its inception in 2003 until March, 2005, after which he served as “Chairman of the Office of Strategic Innovation”, and as Quanta's Deputy Chairman from 2003 until his departure from the firm, effective July 25, 2006.

Mutual fund firm Fidelity has increased its position as the largest single investor group in the Bermuda insurance and reinsurance market.The Boston, Massachusetts-based group owns at least five per cent of the common shares of 12 of the 16 companies whose ownerships were reviewed by InsideBermuda, compared with eight of 14 companies in a similar review last year. As of June 30, 2006, Fidelity's total stake in the Bermuda market had a stock market value of approximately $5.6 billion.

Troubled Bermuda insurer Quanta Capital Holdings Ltd. announced on May 25 that it had gone into run-off, with the exception of its Lloyd's of London environmental consulting business, ESC.

Property catastrophe reinsurer PXRE Group was the worst of the bunch as 15 Bermuda-based, publicly-listed insurers reported their - mostly horrendous - fourth quarter results to the SEC during February. Two-thirds of the firms reported net losses, while only two actually managed to make an underwriting profit, as opposed to relying on investment returns to compensate for a lack of underwriting success. Just about the only thing that many firms were successful at towards the end of 2005 was tapping into the seemingly endless supply of capital available to the industry.