Archive for April 13th, 2014
Premier to ring NASDAQ bell
(CNS): The premier will be taking a short overseas trip this week in order to appear on the podium at the NSDAQ Stock Exchange on Wall Street, where he will be ringing the opening bell alongside the Chief Executive of an offshore re-insurance firm. Alden McLaughlin will be ringing the bell on Tuesday – United States Tax Day – at 9:30am along with Jay Madhu, the head of Oxbridge Re, an exempted Cayman Islands company. McLaughlin said the insurance sector was one his government expects to grow in Cayman this year, but revelations on CNS Business show that Cayman’s regulator could be neglecting the industry as the head of the division has been on sick leave for over six months.
The Cayman Islands Government has been proactively seeking reinsurance companies to domicile in the country. Significant revisions to the Insurance Law restructured Class B companies into four categories, including a new class of Insurer for Reinsurance companies and Insurance Linked Securities.
“Global reinsurance markets have reacted positively to Cayman’s new Insurance Law and several reinsurance entities are considering establishing a reinsurance presence in the Cayman Islands. We expect this trend to gain momentum during this year,” said McLaughlin, in a release announcing his trip to Wall Street.
However, CNS Business has learned that Gordon Rowellm who heads up the offshore insurance regulatory sector at CIMA, has been absebt for some six months, leaving the important division in what was described as “disarray” by concerned industry stakeholders. (See full story on CNS Business)
Despite the issues surrounding the regulator, the premier said that ringing the bell next week would provide another welcome platform to promote Cayman’s offshore story.
“This is another excellent opportunity for the Cayman Islands to tell its positive story of providing sound financial services based on modern and stringent laws and regulations in a politically stable environment,” McLaughlin added.
One of the perks of being a public company is ringing the bell on the NASDAQ and the premier said he was happy to be joining Madhu and his Oxbridge Re team on what would be an historic occasion.
The firm is an exempted company organised one year ago in April 2013 to provide reinsurance business to property and casualty insurers in the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Through Oxbridge’s licensed reinsurance subsidiary, Oxbridge Reinsurance Limited, it writes fully collateralised policies to cover property losses from specified catastrophes.
The firm recently raised $26.4m from its initial successful public offering (IPO) of shares to help finance its next stage of growth. The number of share warrants sold was above expectations as Oxbridge Re had previously said it expected to sell between 1.7m and 4.25m share warrants to investors.