Reinsurance Regulation:A Contemporary and Comparative Study


Book Description

We seem to be living at a time when insurance is strained to the breaking point. From hurricanes and earthquakes to terrorist attacks and threats of nuclear devastation, enormous risks to life and property; and accompanying liabilities; proliferate on an unprecedented scale. Insurer insolvency is not yet common, but it is not unusual either. And at the root of such failures often lies the compound failure of uncollectable reinsurance. This important book proposes that a significant part of the emerging insurance crisis results from inadequate regulation of reinsurance. In a detailed and cogent analysis of what an effective regulatory regime for reinsurance must entail, the author examines such factors as the following: direct supervision of reinsurers versus supervision of reinsurance policies models from developed countries (US, UK, EU) and international organisations (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Association of Insurance Supervisors) the importance of taking legal and economic differences into account while applying models the problem of local protectionism, especially in developing countries the dismantling of trade barriers in the reinsurance industry global harmonization of reinsurance regulation the role of reinsurance intermediaries finite risk reinsurance insurance-linked securities. The author's concluding chapter presents an essential legal infrastructure that allows for efficiency, security, and individual market characteristics. Professor Wang then applies this framework to the Taiwanese insurance market, demonstrating convincingly how his proposed regime can solve specific problems while respecting Taiwan's distinct market environment. As a meticulously considered appraisal of, and solution to, a world problem that is growing quickly and uncontrollably, Reinsurance Regulation will be of immense value to lawyers, professors, academics, and officials who deal with any facet of economic law.




Reinsurance and the Law of Aggregation


Book Description

In excess of loss reinsurance, the reinsurer covers the amount of a loss exceeding the policy’s deductible but not piercing its cover limit. Accordingly, a policy’s quantitative scope of cover is significantly affected by the parties’ agreement of a deductible and a cover limit. Yet, the examination of whether a loss has exceeded deductible or cover limit necessitates an educated understanding of what constitutes one loss. In so-called aggregation clauses, the parties to (re-)insurance contracts regularly provide that multiple individual losses are to be added together for presenting one loss to the reinsurer when they arise from the same event, occurrence, catastrophe, cause or accident. Aggregation mechanisms are one of the core instruments for structuring reinsurance contracts. This book systematically examines each element of an aggregation mechanism, tracing the inconsistent usage of aggregation language in the markets and scrutinizing the tests developed by courts and arbitral tribunals. In doing so, it seeks to support insurers, reinsurers, brokers and lawyers in drafting aggregation clauses and in settling claims. Focusing on an analysis of primary sources, particularly judicial decisions, the book interprets each judicial decision to describe a system of inter-related rules, collating, organising and describing the English law of aggregation as applied by the courts and arbitral tribunals. It further draws a comparison between the English position and the corresponding rules in the Principles of Reinsurance Contract Law (PRICL).







Securitization Law and Practice


Book Description

Securitization--once a fairly straightforward means of offering collateral for investment--has mushroomed into a massively complex area of financial practice. The central role occupied by such risk-distributing products as collateral debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), collateral loan obligations (CLOs), and credit derivatives has given rise to one of the most crucial inquiries of our era: Is the financial collapse that threatens the world financial system due merely to rogue traders? Or is there something in the derivative idea itself that spells inevitable disaster? Most important, can we isolate the truly productive aspects of securitization and learn to recognise pitfalls in advance? As always in such ideational minefields, it is the legal practitioners who are expected to provide guidance to distressed investors and asset dealers. Hence this vital new book. Written from a distinctly practical point of view by Jan Job de Vries Robb� with contributions from Paul Ali and Tim Coyne--all three leading authorities with extensive experience as counsel both in-house and in private practice, in addition to sterling academic credentials--the book sheds clear light on every aspect of today's securitization techniques, including welcome guidance on the following: ; keeping track of exposure to the CDO market; and evaluating such emerging asset classes as commodity risk, microfinance, and project finance risk. In the course of the analysis the book proceeds from the relevant framework and guiding legal principles, through key risks and building blocks in securitization transactions, to the various product classes and sub-classes and their differences and common denominators. Non-credit risk and niche products (such as fund and insurance securitization) are also covered. The final chapters are devoted to the applicable rules as laid down in Basel II and International Financial Reporting Standards.




International Bibliography Of Economics 2003


Book Description

First published in 1952, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology) is well established as a major bibliographic reference for students, researchers and librarians in the social sciences worldwide. Key features * Authority: Rigorous standards are applied to make the IBSS the most authoritative selective bibliography ever produced. Articles and books are selected on merit by some of the world's most expert librarians and academics. * Breadth: today the IBSS covers over 2000 journals - more than any other comparable resource. The latest monograph publications are also included. * International Coverage: the IBSS reviews scholarship published in over 30 languages, including publications from Eastern Europe and the developing world. * User friendly organization: all non-English titles are word sections. Extensive author, subject and place name indexes are provided in both English and French.







Reimagining Business History


Book Description

A vigorous call for rethinking the field of business history. Business history needs a shake-up, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson argue, as many businesses go global and cultural contexts become critical. Reimagining Business History prods practitioners to take new approaches to entrepreneurial intentions, company scale, corporate strategies, local infrastructure, employee well-being, use of resources, and long-term environmental consequences. During the past half century, the history of American business became an unusually active and rewarding field of scholarship, partly because of the primacy of postwar American capital, at home and abroad, and the rise of a consumer culture but also because of the theoretical originality of Alfred D. Chandler. In a field long given over to banal company histories and biographies of tycoons, Chandler took the subject seriously enough to ask about the large patterns and causes of corporate success. Chandler and his students found the richest material for theorizing about the course of business history in large companies and their institutional structures and cultures. Meantime, Scranton and others found smaller firms, those specializing in batch work as opposed to mass-produced goods, far closer to the norm and more telling. Scranton and Fridenson believe that the time has come for a sweeping rethinking of the field, its materials, and the kinds of questions its practitioners should be asking. How can this field develop in an age of global markets, growing information technology, and diminishing resources? A transnational collaboration between two senior scholars, Reimagining Business History offers direction in forty-four short, pithy essays.




Regulating Capital


Book Description

Financial instability threatens the global economy. The volatility of capital movements across national borders has led many observers to argue for a reformed "global financial architecture," a body of consistent rules and institutions to prevent financial crises. Yet regulators have a decidedly mixed record in their attempts to create global standards for the financial system. David Andrew Singer seeks to explain the varying pressures on regulatory agencies to negotiate internationally acceptable rules and suggests that the variation is largely traceable to the different domestic political pressures faced by regulators. In Regulating Capital, Singer provides both a theory of the effects of domestic pressures on international regulation and a detailed analysis of regulators' attempts at international rulemaking in banking, securities, and insurance. Singer addresses the complexities of global finance in an accessible style, and he does not turn away from the more dramatic aspects of globalization; he makes clear the international implications of bank failures and stock-market crashes, the rise of derivatives, and the catastrophic financial losses caused by Hurricane Katrina and the events of September 11.




Eco-finance


Book Description

Market-based environmental instruments are the most creative of the many initiatives devised to combat air and water pollution and promote biodiversity. Among these, none has attracted more attention than the burgeoning trade in environmental allowances and credits. Originally developed in the United States around 1990, these varieties of tradable instruments were globally validated by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which explicitly contemplates the buying and selling of environmental allowances and credits among both sovereign states and corporate entities. Despite U.S. opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, global trading in pollution instruments is growing at an exponential rate, with instruments representing over 70 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions estimated to have been traded in 2003. Eco-Finance is the first in-depth legal analysis of this extraordinary hybrid of environmental regulation and global financial markets. It deals with what are currently the two dominant types of market-based environmental instruments: market-traded environmental instruments (which include the tradable pollution allowances envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol), and environmental financing instruments (which include the emerging class of environmental and socially responsible investment funds). Among the numerous topics and issues treated by Ali and Yano are the following: the ?cap-and-trade? regime; debt-for-environment swaps; forestry securitisations; greenhouse gas emissions markets; carbon funds and swaps; tradable green certificates weather derivatives; duty to hedge climatic risks; catastrophe bonds; protected cell companies; the prudent investor rule; and ethical security indices. The authors deal searchingly with the critical legal issues that arise in connection with these market-based environmental instruments, such as the danger that courts might recharacterise underlying risk transfer agreements as illegal insurance products. For this reason, and for its wealth of practical, theoretical, and informational detail, Eco-Finance will be of enormous value to a broad range of legal, governmental, and business professionals, including environmental regulators, securities regulators, financial market professionals, institutional and other fiduciary investors, corporate risk managers, and investment fund managers, as well as practitioners and academics in both environmental law and financial law.




Innovations in Securitisation Yearbook 2006


Book Description

Despite fears that regulators around the world would act to curtail securitisation severely in the aftermath of the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat, the securitisation industry has witnessed what can only be described as relentless innovation. Securisation remains one of the most important means for financial institutions to diversify their funding, transfer credit risk and manage solvency requirements. This volume, the second in a series focusing on the latest innovations in the global securitisation industry, provides advisers with detailed guidance on key structural and legal issues of innovative securitisations, as well as describing the most recent developments in the accounting and risk-capital treatment of securitisation transactions. The contributors represent a wide range of expert participants in the design, execution, and regulation of securitisation transactions. Among the critical features of contemporary securitisation covered are the following: project finance CLOs; securitisation of equity risk; securitisation of commodity risk through commodity trigger swaps; the convergence of structured credit and securitisation markets; innovation in RMBS: negative equity transactions; innovation in CMBS: A/B structure new markets in Europe, Japan, and Islamic countries; catastrophe risk securitisation; effect of recent US bankruptcy legislation on synthetics; microfinance loan securitisation in emerging markets; public sector securitisation; securitisable intellectual property; application of accounting standards in a rapidly changing environment, and updated analysis of Basel II. The practical perspective of the contributions, combined with the extensive use of case studies of key transactions, should make this volume an invaluable resource for lawyers as well as legal and business academics interested in the very latest developments in the global securitisation markets.