In our article about HIH on September 30 2001, we reported that "the Policyholders' Protection Board confirmed that it had made a number of payouts to creditors of HIH's Lloyd's syndicates 535 and 1688", which suggested that there had been a failure by part of a Lloyd's syndicate to meet its obligations to policyholders.
The suggestion is untrue. There have been no payments at any time by the PPB to any policyholders insured through Cotesworth 535 and 1688 syndicates. In our follow-up article on Cotesworth on September 6 2001 we published that in 1998, "Cotesworth had reported a 58% loss". Although Cotesworth's syndicate 536 suffered a 51% loss, Cotesworth suffered overall a loss of only 7.6% against a Lloyd's market average loss of 10%, which we accept places a different perspective on Cotesworth's performance in 1998.
