Each Friday the Insider Publishing team dissect the week's biggest stories on, The Full Perspective.
This week the team looks at the prospects for Convex’s new capital raising, as we revealed that the carrier was joining the list of firms to seek growth capital in 2020, as well as the CEO transition at PartnerRe, after we spoke to new leader Jacques Bonneau about his plans for the firm.
Key points on Convex include:
- There is no public target size for this fundraise, but a reasonable assumption is that it will look to grow from $1.8bn to the $3bn level it mooted as a goal upon launch. This would give it a bigger balance sheet than other peers such as Beazley.
- Convex sits in a sweet spot for its appeal to PE money looking to enter the sector – it doesn’t have the legacy risk of other established carriers but has a head-start on other 2020 start-ups, as it has already built out a huge team and significant infrastructure and is ready to capture the current market opportunity.
Related reading: https://insuranceinsider.com/articles/134702/convex-sets-wheels-in-motion-on-major-capital-raise
Key points on the PartnerRe CEO transition:
- This is a major changing of the guard as newcomer Jacques Bonneau has taken over from Emmanuel Clarke, whose involvement with PartnerRe stretches back to 1997. Coming just a few months after the reinsurer’s sale to Covea collapsed, the industry will be studying the runes, as editor-in-chief Adam McNestrie put it, for signs on what the transition means for future M&A activity for the firm.
- However Bonneau insists that there has been no discussion of prospects for another sale. Instead, he says the focus is on continuing to improve results after the carrier took a notably steelier approach to earlier 2020 renewals. But can the firm walk a line between maintaining its historic relationship-based approach to renewals while still showing some of this mettle on pricing?
Related reading: https://insuranceinsider.com/articles/134756/bonneau-pledges-to-make-partnerre-a-great-firm-after-average-run
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