Stockwatch

The week's winners
Allianz up 6%
Kiln up 6.2%
St Paul Companies up 6.9%

The week's losers
Cox down 18%
Royal & SunAlliance down 6.9%
Goshawk down 5.9%

After the most dramatic week of the year so far, it may pay dividends to stop a while and take stock.

All the bluster over CGNU changing its name should not be allowed to obscure that, while its headline results may look good in comparison to Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA), all is not necessarily rosy at the UK's biggest insurance group.

If brokers were the flavour of the month last week, Hill House Hammond bucked that trend this week.

The Bristol-based group's operating profit slid to £4m in 2001 down from £12m in 2000.

But insurance software operation Sherwood International was harder hit. It turned in a pre-tax loss of £11m, with £4.1m booked to a court judgment and its costs.

The court case against Horace Holman Group was over the failure of a software package Sherwood sold in 1993 and stopped selling in 1996.

In what has turned out to be a case of insult heaped upon injury, Sherwood had hoped to recover its losses from its insurers. A pity one of them was Independent.

Sherwood's pre-tax profit, excluding exceptional charges, was down to £2.4m for 2001 from £8m in 2000. Despite the bad news, the stock was up 1.5% at 115p by late afternoon on Monday.

Close Premium Finance had a better time. The operation previously known as Prompt pulled off record results to finance £600m of insurance premiums.

Close Brothers group managing director Rod Kent this week announced he will step down in October after 28 years.

Colin Keogh, the investment bank's asset management head, will assume the new role of group chief executive.

Kent told Insurance Times: "We are probably the largest in commercial premiums, but not personal premiums.

"In terms of what the future holds, this is a high growth sector," he said.

Financing insurance premiums makes up about 23% of Close Brothers' loan portfolio and the performance may have helped the stock on its way to an 8% rise on Monday on the back of the results. By the end of the day it was 715p, up 55p.