BOW WAVE 208

4 Years On Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

Bow Wave homepage
Previous issue (207) / Current issue / Next issue (209)

Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2003 WavyLine.com	Issue No 208 17 Nov 03
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
Subscribe	Unsubscribe

In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Bow Wave Four Years On
3. Inside CIS Insurance Markets
4. Allianz under the National Socialists
5. Readers' Picks: Shipping Sites in Asia
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Taken from Jonathan Green's Slang Down the Ages (1993) is this definition:

"fourpence (the groat) was called a flag, a castle rag (rhyming slang) or a joey (from the economist Joseph Hume (1777-1855) and was coined by London cabbies."

New Readers this week include:

R Fonda of lawyers Cozen O'Connor in Seattle
Al Hamilton
Geoff Farnsworth Partner at Norton White in Sydney John Dawes National Manager, Marine Claims Allianz Australia Ship Planner Raza Kirmani of CP SHIPS Oceania in Sydney Prof Elinor Garely of the City University of NY

News of Readers

Elinor Gately is working on a Dissertation for her Doctorate in International Business - "A Study of Guest Safety at International Luxury and Five Star Hotels" - the research has been completed in Bangkok, Thailand, Miami, Florida and Cape Town, South Africa.

contact her at:

travelsafety@hotmail.com

Richard Famie of security specialists GMSSCO is holding a seminar on the ISPS Code for Richards Butler on 02 December at 12:30 in London.

Contact him at:

gmsscouk@gmssco.com

Readers Write:

Gerard Mathews, the Executive Manager of the London Shipping Law Centre writes:

Our 2003-2004 Lecture Programme commenced with a great start last month with our Arbitration Appeals Debate chaired by H.H. Anthony Diamond QC. It was well attended and there was positive interaction between the panel and the delegates concerning the issue of possible amendments to the Arbitration Act 1996.

Our second event "London Commodity Arbitrations" is a follow-up and will be discussed by leading lights in that specialised area of arbitration.

KEY ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED WILL INCLUDE:

An overview of commodity arbitrations in London
Commodity arbitrations from the user's perspective Developments in commodity arbitration from 1963 to-date Trade arbitrators v Lawyer arbitrators in commodity arbitration

Chairman: Graham Perry - Arbitrator
Panellists: Richard Black - Barlow Lyde & Gilbert Christopher Potts - Middleton Potts Roger Rookes - Louis Dreyfus Trading Ltd.
WEDNESDAY 26th NOVEMBER 2003, 5.30 for 6.00pm

VENUE: Hill Taylor Dickinson, Irongate House, Duke's Place, London, EC3A

Contact Gerard at:

uctlslc@ucl.ac.uk

Time does fly doesn't it.

Enjoy.

2. Bow Wave Four Years On

This edition marks another completed year of this E-Zine, which started as an experiment with 200 Readers four years ago. Then during the casino atmosphere prevailing in the insurance world there were great expectations that the internet would change the way we all lived in this industry and all others. These expectations together with the inflation of asset values gave the times a febrile quality. Many people for a short while rather lost leave of their senses.

Today the 8700 or so subscribers of Bow Wave read about a rather different industry. The marine and transport insurance industry is still struggling to make a surplus for those who underwrite it, both mutual and fixed. The years of red ink have led to a steady consolidation of the market and the erosion of diversity. In Lloyd's of London, the traditional high tower of international marine insurance, many hundred syndicates have become less than two dozen.

The sense of walls closing in has been a steady theme over the years in Bow Wave. Out in industry gatherings, people who provide services to the industry, the surveyors, lawyers, experts and arbitrators all have this perception and all describe a process of going out beyond their traditional fields in search of new sources of income. Also over these years there has been no shortage of people known for their industry skills out looking for pastures new.

So the search for the new markets, new ways, new approaches and the occasional sideways look at current practice will likely remain the themes for Bow Wave in the future. Now and again we will try something new ourselves.

I would like to thank our sponsors and advertisers who help to keep the thing a going concern. My thanks also to the many hundreds of Readers who have become correspondents during the past four years. It is all great fun and highly interesting. My in-box runneth over.

Sam Ignarski

3. Inside CIS Insurance Markets

George Grishin of Oakshott Insurance is holding one of the more interesting insurance events of the year with quite a line up of usual speakers:

This is a half-day seminar which will take place in Lloyd’s Old Library on Friday, November 21st, 2003 at 3.00 pm until 6.00 pm., followed by a buffet reception.

Seminar Chairman Howard Franks of Wellington Underwriting Syndicate 2020 at Lloyd’s do the introductions:

- AIG Central Europe & CIS, London:
* John Abramson, Regional Legal Counsel
- Legal aspects of working in the region

- Credo-Classic Insurance, Kiev:
* Vladimir Simonchuk, Vice-President
- The Ukrainian experience of settling international aviation claims

- Ingosstrakh Insurance, Moscow, Russia:
* Alex Timofeev, Director, P&I Claims
- Ingosstrakh’s major P&I claims,

* Maksim Alekhin, Deputy Director, Non-Marine Underwriting - Ingosstrakh’s experience in insuring and reinsuring large industrial risks in Russia,

- Kazakhinstrakh Insurance, Almaty, Kazakakhstan: * Nurlan Moldahmetov, President,

- Military Insurance, Moscow, Russia:
* Oleg Goncharov, Vice-President
- Marine claims handling in Russia,

- Ostra-Kiev Insurance, Kiev, Ukraine:
* Igor Gordienko, President
- Present state of the Ukrainian Insurance market,

- Oakeshott Insurance, London/Kiev/Moscow:
* Samson Akande, Accounting specifics in the region, * Katherina Huzik, Dealing with individual risks, * George Grishin, Regional reinsurance markets,
* Barry Pierce, Placing marine risks with Russian underwriters. * Sergey Plyashko, Retail broking in Russia,
* Oleg Stelmakh, Reinsurance broking in Ukraine.

The seminar, George says, will be most beneficial to underwriters, brokers, solicitors and adjusters who are working, or are keen to work in this area. There is a charge of GBP 70 plus VAT payable by cheque / telegraphic transfer to Oakeshott Insurance.

Contact George at:

tel +44 20 7680 1230
fax +44 20 7680 1240
e-mailsur.com

4. Allianz under the National Socialists

Last Friday's Review Page in Lloyd's List--which nowadays is edited by Neville Smith--contained this book review by your editor:-

THERE has been recent news in the insurance press announcing that the historic cross holdings agreement between Munich Re and Allianz is to come to an end. This is to say that the historic 1921 agreement which came to mean a 30% cross shareholding --one in the other--would give way. Henceforth they will be content with 12.5% cross ownership.

One of the more painstaking chronicles of the Allianz was produced by Berkeley business history professor Gerald Feldman, who produced a history of the Allianz under the Third Reich, commissioned in 1997 by the Board of Management of Allianz AG.

This was a reasonably far-sighted thing for the board to do, for Professor Feldman spares no one in his dissection of the past and he describes very well how if you sleep with dogs you are liable to end up fairly lousy.

The book, 568 pages long with index, is an interesting read for those of us who know the German insurance scene and the enduring qualities of the men and women who work within it.

So far as Allianz was concerned, as the book makes clear, it remained a force for the continuation of private liberal capitalist insurance, and not even the activities of Kurt Schmitt, its leading light, as an economics minister in an early National Socialist cabinet and his honorary officer rank in the Waffen SS undermined its strategy to survive the Nazi era intact in a leading condition in the German economy.

That is not to say that the activities of the company could be isolated from events in German society at the time.The company’s Jewish officers and employees eventually had either to flee abroad or perish like everyone else under the racial laws and the owners of life policies were, as the book documents, mostly obliged to surrender their investments ahead of maturity, normally to pay the fines levied upon them following the sharp deterioration of their civil position in Germany following Kristallnacht.

But running through this history is the tendency of the company always to attempt to observe its obligations to its customers and to respect the conventions of insurance.

Without denying its interrelationships with the Third Reich, it is nevertheless possible for the book to demonstrate that Allianz and its senior officers never really had their hearts in it.

The story told by Professor Feldman is related with great care and erudition.

One sometimes wishes he has a slightly more industrial understanding of his subject as he sometimes seems only partially to understand the way German insurances are subdivided into transport, machine, liability and life classes which do not always correspond to their translated meanings.

But it is fascinating to observe how the company, even at the height of German wartime power, continued to undergo all the frustrations which may be expected in marketing products in Eastern Europe, France, the Low Countries and the Nordic areas.

Some things, even during the dark hegemony of tyranny, do not change.

Allianz and the German Insurance Business 1933-1945, by Gerald D Feldman, Cambridge University Press, 2001 ISBN: 0 521 80929 0

5. Readers' Picks: Shipping Sites in Asia

PR and Marketing Man Ferdi Stolzenberg in Hong Kong recently passed on these references for anyone interested in reading about the region:

http://www.marinedigital.com

http://www.asiamaritime.com/

http://www.indiamaritime.com/

http://www.malaysiamaritime.com/

http://www.mgn.com/

http://www.shipbuilding.com.cn/en/index.php

http://www.schednet.com/home/index.htm

http://www.asianlegalonline.com/asia/detail_article.cfm?ArticleID=1328

http://www.mpa.gov.sg/homepage/newsletters.html

http://www.maritimepress.co.kr/english/default.asp

http://www.jmd.co.jp/

http://www.baird.com.cn/asp/english/index.asp

Contact Ferdi at:

ferdi@stolzenberg.com.hk

6. And Finally...

Thanks to Sandor Palfi in Budapest for this one:

A man walking along a California beach was deep in prayer. All of a sudden,he said out loud, "Lord grant me one wish." Suddenly the sky clouded abovehis head and in a booming voice the Lord said, "Because you have TRIED to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish." The man said, "Build a bridge to Hawaii, so I can drive over anytime I want." The Lord said,"Your request is very materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking. The supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific! The concrete and steel it would take! I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of another wish, a wish you think would honor and glorify me."The man thought about it for a long time. Finally he said, "Lord, I wish that I could understand women. I want to know how they feel inside, what they are thinking when they give me the silent treatment, why they cry, what they mean when they say 'nothing', and how I can make a woman truly happy." The Lord replied, "You want two lanes or four on that bridge?"

BOW WAVE is published each week to around 8600 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries.

Thanks for reading BOW WAVE