Stockwatch

The week's winners
Royal & SunAlliance up 19.7%
Wellington Underwriting up 14%

The week's losers
Aon down 1.6%
St Paul down 1.3%

The shake-up at the top of SVB, in which derivatives man Matthew Fosh replaced Rupert Villers as chief executive, sent the Lloyd's operator's stock up, with a 12% gain the day after Monday's announcement.

Villers stays on in the wings as chief underwriting officer, from where no doubt he will watch to see if Fosh has more luck than he did in drumming up investors' appetite to swell the group's coffers.

There was also an upward swing at Sherwood, where some US software deals and a successful presentation to analysts helped push the stock up 16.78% on last Wednesday.

Sherwood's performance was more than Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) could manage, despite its gain of nearly 20% over the Monday-to-Monday period.

Investors were clearly divided on the merits of R&SA's restructuring as were the analysts.

AXA has not been having a good week. Its stock lost 9.08% last Thursday with further falls the next two trading days.

It reported solid revenue figures for the first nine months of the year, with group property and casualty revenues up 5.1%, but it was not enough to send the group's stock up.

Tighter underwriting helped nudge international insurance revenues up 9.8% to ¤4.8bn (£2.9bn).

In the UK property and casualty gross written premiums were up 4%.