BOW WAVE 51

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2000 WavyLine.com	Issue No 51 07 Nov 00
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Judgement in Jaffray
3. Inttra Site
4. TechBuddha.Com
5. Search Engine for Risk Managers
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

A mixed bag of sites, mostly insurance and risk related but all worth a visit by readers unfamiliar with them. All seem to us to demonstrate in some way how quickly the world is coming to grips with the promises and disapointments of the internet.

2. Judgement in Jaffray

On Friday last Mr Justice Cresswell decided against the Lloyd's Refusniks in the Commercial Court. The text of the judgement is available via the link below. The tiny group of holdouts known as the Jaffray Group have seen their average exposure rise six or seven fold as a result of the extra costs of the trial. The scathing remarks made by the Judge on the state of affairs at Lloyds giving rise to the litigation have been widely reported. The story of the fall of a great national commercial institution is also written in the numbers. Where there were in 1990 33 000 names, today there are 3000.400 Syndicates have been winnowed down to 120. Before an industry of names' agents took care of business. Today there are 5. Of those names that remain, the capacity assumed has expanded by a factor of three. The story of Lloyd's today is similar. Plenty of capacity is there for business, but not all of it is needed,let alone the roughly double amount imagined under the restoration plan.

See the judgement at:

http://www.courtservice.gov.uk/judgments/judg_home.htm

3. Inttra Site

Just out is the new portal sponsored by Maersk, together with some other investors, more or less the remaining unit load industry of Europe (e.g. MSC, CMA-CGM, Hamburg Sued and P&O Nedlloyd).

Observers remark that the parties have little portal/e-commerce experience and the fear of domination by Maersk Line is also a question from the off. Portals, it is said, do not always attract players in markets if they are too closely identified with one or more of a group of competitors. The new inttra portal will put this notion to the test. A trusted third party may in the end may be needed to make the notion of a Unit Load Portal really fly. A longer examination of this issue is available in the Quarterpoints Column appearing today in Lloyd's List.

http://www.inttra.com/

4. TechBuddha.Com

In the great internet bubble of the early months of the current year, some of the greatest excitement was generated in Asia where the forward looking qualities and mass market possibilities of the net were (and are) prized. A more level headed, not to say sardonic, view of technology in Asia is available here:

http://www.techbuddha.com/

5. Search Engine for Risk Managers

News reaches us of this new tool from RiskVue, the excellent e-zine for risk managers at.

http://www.riskvue.com/

The Search engine, called Ask RIMS,is the brain child of The Risk and Insurance Management Society. A simple phrase typed into the engine will search a database of 40,000 risk and insurance-related web pages. The website is running the beta version for testing by risk professionals who can feed back views and suggestions for inclusions at:

suggestions@rims.org.

Visit the site at:

http://www.askrims.com/

6. And Finally...

Last week on Monday a very big storm came across the Atlantic and brought normal life to a halt in many parts of the world.

How big can be seen on the rather good nasa site devoted to the big picture on earth.

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?6006

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