Stockwatch

The week's winners
Kiln up 8.2%
Hiscox up 5.3%

The week's losers
Royal & SunAlliance down 7.6%

Chubb dealt Hiscox a blow on Tuesday when it announced it would vote against the Lloyd‚s insurer's planned £110.5m rights issue.

Hiscox is keen to get the money so that it can write business in the current hard market conditions.

Shares in Hiscox were down by 2.68% on Tuesday afternoon to 145p.

Hiscox turned down a bid by Chubb in January after the US group offered 210p a share.

Chubb is the largest shareholder in Hiscox, with 28.3% of the company.

Hiscox said it already had a majority in favour of going ahead with the rights issue.

Brokers will have the chance to buy shares in Broker Direct, the marketing and management company, after it became just the sixth member of new alternative market, ShareMark.

The move gives Broker Direct a mechanism for trading its shares without needing a full listing. Its shares are bought by all brokers who distribute its products.

In what is turning into a season of capital raising, Zurich Financial Services put off plans for an insurance joint venture in India, coupled with assurances that the move would not affect its UK call centre on the sub-continent.

Its planned rights issue is fully underwritten by banks led by Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and UBS Warburg.

And Trenwick is increasing its capacity on Syndicate 839 by 70% to £341m a deal with Berkshire Hathaway in the latest in a long line of Lloyd's investment for the US giant.

Chief executive Warren Buffet told London staff at General Re, a Berkshire subsidiary, to concentrate on underwriting profits.

He was speaking within hours of Aon chief executive Dennis Mahoney telling the Insurance Institute of London that, with combined ratios of well over 100%, the problem for insurers has been not so much one of losses, but rather the "depletion of their assets".

He predicted further capital raising would be "very, very hard" and described the insurance industry's way of doing business as "antiquated, expensive, and unprofessional".