December, 2007
NEW YORK (Reuters)?Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is starting a bond insurer that would help state and local governments lower their borrowing costs, posing a direct challenge to established rivals struggling with deteriorating credit markets. The new insurer, Berkshire Hathaway Assurance...
NEW YORK (Reuters)?A U.S. judge has ordered the General Re Corp. reinsurance unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to produce internal investigation records in a criminal trial of its former chief executive next month. U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney, who sits in Hartford, Conn.,...
WASHINGTON?President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation extending the federal terrorism insurance backstop for seven years beyond its scheduled Dec. 31 expiration. H.R. 2761, the ?Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007,? also allows the program to respond to catastrophic...
NEW YORK?Standard & Poor?s Corp. announced Friday that it assigned A- financial strength and counterparty credit ratings to Greenwich, Conn.-based Harbor Point Reinsurance U.S. Inc. S&P also said that it affirmed its A- ratings for the reinsurer?s parent company, Bermuda-based Harbor Point Ltd. The...
BLOOMFIELD, Conn.?CIGNA HealthCare will expand a program designed to facilitate online consultations between patients and physicians, offering the program to self-insured employers nationwide. The Bloomfield, Conn.-based unit of CIGNA Corp. will expand its four-state pilot of an online consultation...
WASHINGTON?Congress has given final approval to legislation that extends through 2008 the federal law that bans group health care plans from imposing lower annual and lifetime dollar limits for coverage of mental disorders than for other medical conditions. The one-year extension of the law, which...
NEW YORK?Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. said Friday it has begun searching for a replacement for Chief Executive Officer Michael G. Cherkasky, citing a need for new leadership amid disappointing financial results. In a statement, the MMC board said it had ?determined that a change in leadership will...
COLUMBUS, Ohio?Continually selling crack cocaine amounts to employment and thus is sufficient cause to terminate permanent total disability compensation, Ohio?s Supreme Court has ruled. The high court?s decision Wednesday in State ex rel. Lynch vs. Industrial Commission of Ohio upheld a March 1998...
BOSTON?William Gallagher Associates Insurance Brokers Inc. has agreed to pay $4 million to settle charges leveled by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley over its compensation and other business practices. The suit, filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, alleges that the...
WASHINGTON (Reuters)?Lawmakers seeking to revamp regulation of the U.S. insurance industry pledged Thursday to keep up the pressure next year, after making little progress in 2007 on a federal rulebook that could allow national insurers to avoid the maze of state laws. "We will continue to have...
