Reg Billyard

In the latest fall out from the fraudulent practices of Bermuda based broker AlphaStar Stirling Cooke, a U. S. insurer is being sued for unpaid claims that may eventually total $60 million.John Hancock Financial Services Inc., of Boston, Massachusetts, is

Bermuda-based broker Reg Billyard, whose alleged malpractice has contributed to chaos in world reinsurance markets, appears to have left the industry. Billyard retired as President of JEH Re Underwriting Management (Bermuda) Ltd. in May and moved from Bermuda to his native England.

California-based Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co. has won a second arbitration over its refusal to pay multi-million dollar reinsurance claims on coverage brokered by Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings. The losing party was Alan R. Bird, on his own behalf and representing all members of Lloyd's Syndicate 103 for the 1993/94 years of account.

The Alan Bird Syndicate's UK attorneys have discussed the possibility of suing the Chubb Insurance Group and Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings in the aftermath of its arbitration loss to Transamerica. Chubb, which previously lost a similar arbitration to Transamerica, is considered to be an attractive target because it has "the deepest pocket", while Stirling Cooke might escape an action because it was "highly probable that the company will eventually fold".

Interim Arbitration Award and Reasons for Interim Award in Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co. v. Alan R. Bird, on his own behalf and as representative of all the members of Syndicate 103 at Lloyd's for 1993 and 1994.

Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings has suffered a major setback in an arbitration held recently in London. The arbitration panel decided by three votes to nil to rescind reinsurance contracts for 1993 and 1994 that the San Francisco-based Transamerica insurance/financial services group had with Duncanson & Holt, Chubb Insurance Group and Chubb-subsidiary Federal Insurance Company.

Serious questions about the future of Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings are being raised following the filing of a lawsuit in New York accusing the firm of racketeering and fraud and the collapse of its share price to an all-time low on NASDAQ. The company has also disclosed for the first time in its SEC filings that it is involved in several arbitrations in the UK and is also a defendant in seven different lawsuits that were filed last year by reinsurers and reinsureds claiming to have been defrauded.