Lloyd’s insurers Brit, Chaucer, Catlin and Beazley pull out
Lloyd’s insurers pulled as much as £500m from hedge funds and private equity after investment returns fell by more than half, Bloomberg reports
Catlin Group, Brit Insurance, Chaucer and Beazley withdrew or have redemption requests on as much as £434m of investments including in hedge funds, according to regulatory filings.
“The premise we and the rest of the world looked at in terms of hedge funds was that they would provide an uncorrelated return to things like the equity markets. That didn’t happen,” Catlin’s chief operating officer Paul Jardine said.
In 2008 hedge funds posted their worst year, dropping 19%, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.
Aggregated accounts for Lloyd’s show they posted £522m pounds of investment returns last year, or 2% of assets, compared with £1.2bn pounds in 2007.
- Chaucer recalled the £155m pounds it had in hedge funds in December.
- Catlin has called for the return of $240m of its hedge-fund investments.
- The value of Brit’s holdings in “specialised” investments fell by £116m in the year through June. Brit had 7.4% of its assets in such investments in June 2008.
- Hedge-fund investments Beazley dropped £18m, or 18%, in the first half.
