look unlikely to be liable for any losses incurred by Eurostar as a result of their end-of-year travel disruption, caused by trains unable to cope with melting snow once they entered the Channel Tunnel, reports Insurance Day. The train operator was said to be unlikely to have business interruption insurance, but even if it did, insurers would likely "have an issue" with the validity of the claim, given its cause.

Antares Syndicate 1274, set up with £135m in capacity in 2008 by Chaucer with the backing of Lightyear Capital, is to be managed by Antares Management Agency Ltd (AMAL), giving Antares independence as a Lloyd's operation. Syndicate 1274 now has a capacity of £200m, offering property, casualty, marine and aviation risks. Antares managing director Stephen Redmond, who came over as chief underwriter from Württembergische when Antares was formed, along with renewal rights to the German insurer's London book, said that the deal "brings our presence in the marketplace to the next level". AMAL will retain links with Chaucer, with current and former CEOs Bob Stuchbery and Ewen Gilmour being among the non-executive board members.

Plans to relaunch a New York insurance exchange along the lines of the London market will pose few worries for Lloyd's, according to Tom Bolt, Lloyd's new underwriting performance director. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Bolt said that "Lloyd's is incredibly resilient and robust and it shouldn't be underestimated". He noted that the Illinois Exchange ceased to operate "because they had a very few big writers and it was also a soft market". But Mr Bolt said that the New York plan "may not be such a bad idea if you think you're going to take a long slow road and try to build it right".

Former AIG boss Maurice "Hank" Greenberg has proposed that the US government cut its stake in AIG to less than 20%, claiming that this would attract new capital to the insurer and would also make it easier for taxpayers to get their bailout money back. Citing an unnamed source, Reuters said that Mr Greenberg had put the proposal forward as part of a larger restructuring plan. He was said to have been in discussions with AIG chief Robert Benmosche and with members of the US Congress for several months. But the plan, which would involve AIG paying a much lower interest rate to the US government and seeing a longer-term debt facility, has found little sympathy on Capitol Hill, Reuters reported. One reason could be that the plan also entailed getting back some of the money "funnelled" into several credit counterparties in the wake of the Lehman Bros collapse in September 2008. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr Greenberg alleged that financial machinations carried out by investment bank Goldman Sachs helped bring AIG to the brink of collapse at the height of the late-2008 crisis. He noted that back in 2005 AIG accelerated the writing of insurance policies on mortgage-backed securities, just as the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) drafted new accounting rules for the so-called credit default swaps that AIG was writing. These new rules required the insurer to make cash payments to counterparties to cover losses on the underlying securities, even before such losses were realized. "I don't know whether Goldman Sachs was the force behind the ISDA change, or Deutsche Bank", said Mr Greenberg. Meanwhile, Mr Greenberg said on Tuesday that the inquiry into the rescue of AIG in 2008 could be a "catalyst" for a change in the terms of the bailout.March 10.