Lloyd’s of London

Lloyd’s of London was in crisis following the explosion of US asbestos and environmental liabilities and lawsuits.

Whilst much of the focus was on establishing equitable treatment of the “Names”, Martin Dolan chose to work with the entrepreneurs who drove value creation at Lloyd’s: the Managing Agents John Charman, Stephen Catlin, Robert Hiscox, Henry Engelhardt and a dozen others, to define the “dedicated” corporate capital vehicle which, for the first time, allowed limited liability capital to align directly with Managing Agents.

The dedicated corporate capital vehicle strategy flew in the face of the direction set initially by the Council of Lloyd’s (which directed capital to be “spread” across Syndicates and not connected to Managing Agencies) yet in a few years following the investments by Capital Z and Harvard Capital in John Charman’s agency, the Pritzker family in Stephen Catlin’s agency, Mid Ocean/XL in Mark Brockbank’s agency, White Mountains/State Farm in Murray Lawrence/Amlin, and Barclay’s Capital in Henry Engelhardt/David Stevens’ Admiral direct motor business, the dedicated corporate capital vehicle became the model for virtually all corporate capital invested in Lloyd’s over the following decades.

In addition, the leveraged capital model deployed by these agencies - where reinsurer LCs provided by Zurich’s Centre Re and by Munich Re spoke for up to half the ‘equity’ - paved the way for adequate private equity investor IRRs and set the stage, later, for the XXX financing and LC structures which became a critical path to enhancing investor returns and optimizing capital structures in various industry sub-segments.

These entrepreneurs moved the needle to create significant shareholder value - and redefined the future of the industry.