blog-retag:,2008:/82008-05-02T16:37:46ZReinsurance BlogMovable Type 3.36Two years to livetag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.507362008-05-02T16:36:38Z2008-05-02T16:37:46ZDear friend, With only one or two exceptions, this quarter has been pretty ugly for results hasn’t it? Well, get used to it. You knew it was going to happen sometime and that time has now come. It’s only going...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Dear friend,
With only one or two exceptions, this quarter has been pretty ugly for results hasn’t it?
Well, get used to it. You knew it was going to happen sometime and that time has now come.
It’s only going to start getting worse from here.
I expect we’ve got one last year of genuine profitability, perhaps followed by one with profits of the more cosmetically-enhanced and surgically-altered variety before the red numbers start making their presence really felt.
First the reserve releases start drying up.
Then the reserves themselves start drying up.
Then the suits at the ratings agencies start notching up.
And then the run-off guys start mopping up
and the liquidators start adding up.
Only then can the market turn properly and reserve additions start flowering like desert cacti after rain.
Then we can all get down to business again.
Brokers are more cost-sensitive and always feel the pinch and show the pain first. I feel that the tough but necessary decisions we have seen taken this quarter by some of the big players are a presage of things to come for everyone else.
What can you do?
Keep you head down and your mouth shut, don’t leave where you are for some hair-brained start-up and whatever you do, don’t to talk yourself out of a job by declining too much, or blow yourself out of a job by underwriting too much.
Got all that?
Coach-class survivorstag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.506712008-04-25T10:15:04Z2008-04-28T10:19:27ZDear friend, The inevitable always happens. That is why it is inevitable! But it’s strange how what is inevitable often comes as a shock when it finally does happen. Houses grow in value at 15% a year for 8 years...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Dear friend,
The inevitable always happens. That is why it is inevitable!
But it’s strange how what is inevitable often comes as a shock when it finally does happen.
Houses grow in value at 15% a year for 8 years until nobody can afford them, then they put on a final inexplicable spurt before crashin hard.
Why does it surprise us?
After all, none of us believed that houses were worth what they were selling for, but when prices finally start falling towards a more realistic level, we don’t like it.
Similarly, credit expands at breakneck speed for almost a decade, accelerated further by all sorts of questionable financial engineering. We enjoy the illusion of new-found wealth while this new money spreads throughout a world looking unsuccessfully for a profitable home.
But when no profitable use for the money can be found, leverage unwinds and the inevitable contraction comes, we howl in pain and plead for mercy.
Hilariously, we then make a logical flip and blame the fall of overpriced housing on the credit crunch.
And the next bit is even more perverse — we then plead with our elected representatives to find more and more ridiculous ways of making credit cheaper so that our young first-time buyers can afford the (still overpriced) houses and prop up the market for the rest of us.
It’s all a bit like offering a drunk one last drink to ease his hangover — sooner or later you’re going to either run out of booze or he’ll drop down dead from liver failure.
Neither end result is one that we would recommend.
‘Well’, we tell ourselves, ‘at least our industry is a less perverse no-nonsense sort of place to work.’
Or perhaps it is just perverse in slightly different ways? But that’s one for another day.
After a long period of pressure the inevitable has finally happened in our neck of the woods.
Falling margins in the reinsurance broking sector have lead to a savage round of blood-letting and cost-cutting. And there will probably be more pain to endure before this episode comes to an end. After all, pricing is not turning, the dollar is still weak and demand is still slack.
It may be a shock to the system, but no-one can escape falling margins.
So let’s not make an unedifying prospect of ourselves by making too big a deal about it. We’ve had a good run.
When they start nudging upwards, we can all come out to play again.
But until then I’m afraid it’s economy class — and keep your head down.
Look after yourself.
Cold Chillstag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.505952008-04-18T13:38:14Z2008-04-18T13:42:32ZDear friend, Yesterday in London a strong wind blew in off the North Sea (that foreboding stretch of dark water between these fair isles and Scandinavia). The temperature of the North Sea is barely above freezing at this time of...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Woman In Black, a supposedly terrifying ghost story set as a West End play.
‘Chilling’ read the reviews – but the only chilling I got was another blast from the frozen wastes on my way back to the subway. I had even felt cold inside the theatre, normally a stiflingly hot place at the best of times.
So you may have guessed I am not well in body and am writing this from home as I try to wrap up warm and recover from my aching chills.
But there’s nothing wrong with my mind, I don’t think.
I know that as a journalist I shouldn’t say this, but the news can be such a distraction, that at most times it is best ignored. But some news is genuinely interesting.
The Brazilian market is finally open - after at least 30 years of news stories speculating about when and how this might happen. This is a big deal.
Brazil is an amazing country – and for westerners in many ways it is more amazing and exciting and offers more opportunities than China or India.
It’s a vast democracy with huge natural resources and not too many problems with natural catastrophes (barring the odd tropical storm popping up where it shouldn’t!)
In typical Brazilian style they made us sweat for it (and made this editor look like a fool in the process! But you knew that anyway, dear reader) but pretty soon this market will go from just three to at least thirteen reinsurers.
But now that the place is open - it looks like it’s genuinely open and ready for business with no holding back. These Brazilians know how to party.
And sitting in a northern country that still hasn’t got round to having a spring day this year, I can but fantasise about that other east wind – the one from the South Atlantic, cooling and caressing a sun-kissed tropical Brazilian beach.
No wonder the Brazilian regulators were having trouble processing the applications!
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Bom Dia Brazil!tag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.505872008-04-17T16:07:43Z2008-04-17T16:18:06ZAlex Ferguson writes: Hello and welcome to the new Brazilian reinsurance market! Contrary to popular belief, the Brazilian regulatory authorities have decided that their reinsurance market will open THIS week - not in two months' time. According to insiders, it'll...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Alex Ferguson writes:
Hello and welcome to the new Brazilian reinsurance market!
Contrary to popular belief, the Brazilian regulatory authorities have decided that their reinsurance market will open THIS week - not in two months' time.
According to insiders, it'll still take "around two months" for everything to get fully up to speed, so if you're Bermudian player PartnerRe, you could be waiting a while for your licence...
Partner, I wouldn't worry though.....it seems as though everyone except the Brazilian national reinsurer IRB, Lloyd's of London and Munich Re Germany (that'll be writing business from this Latin American country solely on a retro basis) will be waiting for licences - unless Brazilian regulatory HQ can turn around faster than a reinsurance broker's Ferrari.
So who's there - or more's the case, wants to be there? AIG, Ace, Allianz, Chubb, Swiss Re, Korean Re, Paris Re, SCOR, Catlin, Mapfre, Transamerica Re, Transatlantic Re and XL have all applied.
Now the waiting is over, we can't wait for reinsurance's Brazilian adventure to begin.
As for us at Reinsurance, see you at the Carnival.
Alex Ferguson]]>
What a cracking investmenttag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.504092008-04-02T15:52:56Z2008-04-02T16:33:49ZDear friend, Hats off to Heritage,who fell into the arms of Argo today - what a track record. The business floated at 78.5p in August 2006 and a dividend or two later it is going for 160p (154p plus another...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Dear friend,
Hats off to Heritage,who fell into the arms of Argo today - what a track record.
The business floated at 78.5p in August 2006 and a dividend or two later it is going for 160p (154p plus another tasty 6p dividend).
Was this set against the backdrop of a hard market with capacity scarce and easy pickings for those left standing?
No. Quite the opposite.
What other insurance related investment would have allowed you to double your money in 18 months, (despite losing your star underwiter ahead of the IPO)? You'd have to think long and hard.
It's why Lloyd's is still the world capital for (re)insurance entrepereneurs.
To start up on Bermuda these days, you don't much change out of a billion dollars.
But back in London, if you've still got the ear of the members' agents, you're in with a fighting chance.
Long live capitalism!
Gobble, gobble, gobbletag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.503792008-04-01T11:58:48Z2008-04-01T12:26:06ZDear friend, Turkeys do not vote for Christmas, and I can't imagine they enjoy Thanksgiving very much. That is why the NAIC's reaction to the US Treasury proposal to bring in optional federal regulation of insurance is the most predicatable...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
the NAIC's reaction to the US Treasury proposal to bring in optional federal regulation of insurance is the most predicatable thing since a certain Dr Pavlov decided to ring a bell every time he fed his pooches.
But who knows? Maybe there'll be yet another reprieve?
But to a common sense observer from outside the US - the current 50-state system seems indefensible, especially since across the pond a European Union of 27 disparate member states has cross-boarder insurance and reinsurance rules on its books and is pressing ahead with Solvency II.
Meanwhile the IAIS is looking at global harmonisation of regulations.
And don't forget that the optional federal scheme is just that - optional - if nobody wants it, nobody will opt in!
If I were a small firm that only did business in one state I would certainly not bother, but were I Allstate, State Farm or AIG, a global reinsurer, or a specialty surplus or Fac player I'd be ecstatic.
It's a question of horses for courses.
But never bet on anything in politics. The laws of common sense so rarely apply there.
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A bunch of frauds?tag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.506082008-04-01T11:23:04Z2008-04-21T11:25:24ZDear friend, I suppose I’d better try and explain the intriguing front cover of the April 2008 magazine. It all started when I bought a book that I had been meaning to read for ages — it was The Black...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You should get yourself a copy, it’s a unique concoction — a readable book on the philosophy of risk. It’s packed with ideas that are so ingenious that you wonder why you’d never thought of them yourself
Taleb writes like a street preacher, spitting out ideas with a wild fervour
Back in the European dark ages, people were sure all swans were white. If you suggested that such a thing as a black swan existed, they would tell you to take a hike. A couple of centuries later and Europeans travelled to Australasia — where they ‘discovered’ black swans. The point is black swans existed all along — it’s just beyond the realm of the human psyche to imagine there are things out there beyond our knowledge
Hence the cover. Now we know black swans exist, what’s the chance that there aren’t a few pink ones hiding somewhere? The trouble is, these ‘outliers’ can mess things up, especially when it comes to finance. We can guess what happens when you’ve modelled your company to take a maximum hit to capital of 20% from a 1-in-250 year even and it turns out that you take a 2000% blast. Oblivion is obviously what happens
When Taleb expands on black swan theory, things can get quite scary
The trouble with the outliers is that they tend to be as large as they are improbable and end up having disproportionate effects on the manageable world that we like to theorise about. A market rises steadily and then crashes 25% in a single day, blowing leveraged investors out of the water, or a long-dormant volcano suddenly blows its top without warning
In Taleb’s universe, all modelling and projection of the future is a fraud — the only thing that counts is evidence that you have built up and evaluated rigorously. He is what he calls an empirical sceptic. The trouble is that experience can also be misleading. Taleb uses the example of the farmed turkey’s life. Every day the nice farmer feeds and tends to the turkey, so in the turkey’s experience the farmer is a friend. Then suddenly on Christmas Eve, the poor turkey’s knowledge and understanding of the true nature of the farmer is dramatically changed! There are many other examples and thought experiments in the book
Taleb recounts a risk seminar he attended at a top casino in Las Vegas
The casino used high-tech surveillance and risk limitation strategies to make sure it was never taken to the cleaners by either card counters, high rollers or a mathematically improbable run of bad luck on the tables
When he asked what the largest losses to hit the company had been in the past five years, one was a situation where a manger had had a family member kidnapped and another involved a rogue clerk who inexplicably failed to file IRS returns. It was these ‘freak’ events that had caused the most damage and cost them undisclosed millions
As you can see, the real conundrum of the book from an underwriting point of view is that if exposure rating is a fraud and experience rating is also highly misleading, then maybe we should pack up and go home? Are we just successful underwriters because we are unaware of the true risks we run and are simply lucky? Well, sorry to report that according to Taleb, we almost certainly are! Chin up, chancers!
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Walk the walktag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.503572008-03-31T08:50:02Z2008-03-31T10:18:43ZDear friend, It's nice when people say what they mean and mean what they say, isn't it? For example who said this? "I’m very sceptical about acquisitions. I think that most insurance M&A destroys value, and does not create it....Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
"I’m very sceptical about acquisitions. I think that most insurance M&A destroys value, and does not create it. You can probably name ten loss-making, value destructive M&A deals in insurance in ten seconds and if asked you to name ten good ones, you probably can’t."
Give up?
It was Chris O'Kane speaking to me early last year.
Well, hats off to someone who puts his money where his mouth is.
Instead of paying over the odds for an incumbent, Mr O'Kane has decided to build his own Lloyd's operation by transferring existing business into the venerable institution.
Hats off to Aspen! (and they managed to keep it a secret too)
This is also another one of theose full-circle moments, back in 2002 Aspen flew out of Wellington and Lloyd's and now it seems at least part of the boomerang has come back]]>
What all top layer junkies should knowtag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.503582008-03-28T11:24:35Z2008-03-31T10:29:55ZDear friend, It’s great how long flights give you the chance to catch up on a bit of reading. For instance, I picked up an amazing book in the airport lounge on the way out to Dubai last week for...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Dear friend,
It’s great how long flights give you the chance to catch up on a bit of reading.
For instance, I picked up an amazing book in the airport lounge on the way out to Dubai last week for the World Insurance Forum.
It’s called The Black Swan and is by a former bond trader turned philosopher called Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
It’s all about the way our simple human brains just aren’t equipped for the challenges that high impact, low probability events can have on the world and our performance in it.
Never has a tome been more relevant to the psychology of underwriting in general or the psychology of underwriting reinsurance in particular.
Why are we condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past? Why do we find ourselves constantly taking on large risks that we are not sufficiently paid to assume?
This book explains everything.
It’s mostly our own psyche’s fault — it seems our brains are always looking to rationalise things after the event and turn them into neat easily understandable stories.
It makes life easier for us but makes us live in a self confirming delusion like fat, contented turkeys who are suddenly surprised one day to be given the chop and slung in the oven by the farmer who has been so kindly feeding them for the past year.
Based on the visible evidence, what turkey could have guessed what was coming next? Right up to the point of death the farmer had been really nice and friendly!
It’s the things you don’t know that will get you.
Here’s a little experiment Mr Taleb uses:
Read this simple series of numbers;
2, 4, 6
Now, you have to guess what the rule is linking the sequence of numbers – to help, you get to formulate 5 new three-number series and I will give you a simple yes or no answer as to whether they too follow the rule.
Of course in experiments most people just formulate similar series where the numbers rise by 2 each time, like 8, 10, 12 or 6, 8, 10.
And of course these suppositions are correct. So by the fifth try most people are pretty confident of their theory for the number rule (that the number series goes up in increments of two).
Then they are surprised that the rule is dead simple — numbers in ascending order!
So 1, 589, 1,000,000,000 also fits
As does 1,000,000,000, 20 billion, 5 trillion!
Ouch – I’d hate to be on the top layer of that unlucky series of numbers!
How easy it is to be wrong — especially if you ask yourself the wrong questions when analysing a risk.
And what’s so silly is that after the event it’s easy to see where you went wrong — (and then you start rationalising why you missed it and fall straight into another trap).
We seem to happiest finding simple patterns in past events and projecting them into the future, and this leaves us highly vulnerable to unexpected (and often highly improbable) extreme outcomes.
Sound familiar?
Get down to the bookstore — this is a work of tortured genius that all underwriters should be forced to read, especially top layer junkies
Heads I win tails you losetag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.503152008-03-26T16:59:02Z2008-03-26T17:37:15ZDear friend, Nothing’s ever quite what it seems in Florida is it? On the face of it the move to curb the bloated excess of the extended Cat fund in the wind-exposed state is laudable as, for a small increase...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
the excellent bill analysis that comes with the legislation.
“However, about 42 percent of the liability of the FHCF is currently payable to Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens), the state-created property insurer. Therefore, about 42 percent of the bill’s reduction in potential liability to the FHCF would be shifted to Citizens. If Citizens incurs a deficit, it may also issue bonds funded by assessments levied on the same base of policies that are subject to assessment for the FHCF (subject to certain assessment amounts that must first be levied against Citizen’s policyholders)
Generally speaking, about 42 percent of the estimated savings in potential assessments by the FHCF would not be realized by Florida policyholders after accounting for the potential increased assessments by Citizens. Alternatively, Citizens may need to have a larger rate increase to account for the loss in FHCF coverage, when it begins charging actuarially sound rates on January 1, 2009”
Or in other words 42% of the taxpayers’ gain in lighter Cat loss burdens will be clawed back as it falls on the scantily-funded Citizens.
Easy come, easy go — out of one state scheme and into another!
(And I love that bit at the end about Citizens charging actuarially sound rates in 2009
– which Florida politican is ever going to commit electoral suicide with that one?)
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The political cycletag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.501142008-03-11T13:01:21Z2008-03-11T13:05:05ZDear friend, We in the reinsurance business know all about cycles Just as boom begets bust, we know that a meteoric rise often precedes an equally meteoric fall from grace. The faster and higher the rise, the swifter and steeper...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
If it has to be goodbye, so be it. So long, Eliot we’ll never forget you.
But you never know — in politics there’s always another wave coming along.
Lie low for a while, dear Eliot, tread water if you can, and you may surprise some with the force and speed of your comeback.
But nothing you do will ever surpise us!
We'll keep an eye out for you at Reinsurance Towers.]]>
Aigrain's Fourteentag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.500762008-03-07T17:11:24Z2008-03-07T17:12:23ZDear friend, Fourteen percent ceding commission? Hardly worth getting out of bed for, is it? That’s all Swiss Re is getting out of its 20% quota share with Berkshire Hathaway, and apparently there’s no profit commission either. Swiss Re made...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Dear friend,
Fourteen percent ceding commission?
Hardly worth getting out of bed for, is it?
That’s all Swiss Re is getting out of its 20% quota share with Berkshire Hathaway, and apparently there’s no profit commission either.
Swiss Re made a disclosure, those excellent people at Keefe Bruyette and Woods (KBW) have been poring over it (I’ve got my own copy of the figures but forgive me if I defer to others’ better judgement in these matters!).
According to KBW, fourteen points gives a little bit of relief over Swiss Re’s 11.2% administrative expense ratio.
KBW sees this as “superficially charitable”.
But as a broker, I certainly don’t!
We all know Buffett drives a hard bargain, but to me this seems a little tight…
The quid pro quo?
KBW understands that Buffett is not getting any access to Swiss Re’s client data under the deal, and of course, the underwriting pen is still firmly gripped in Zurich.
So that puts paid to one of my early theories — that this was a prelude to a future possible takeover by BH for Swiss in a few years’ time.
It’s great to have disclosures like this —except that this one fails to answer the fundamental question:
Why?
I still don’t get it.
Whoops!tag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.500672008-03-07T10:07:01Z2008-03-07T10:08:28ZDear friend, Hey – it’s good to see that it’s not just us lazy journalists who make mistakes Check this SEC confession out from Aspen: Item 8.01 Other Events Form 10-K Typo On February 29, 2008, Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Item 8.01 Other Events
Form 10-K Typo On February 29, 2008, Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited (‘‘Aspen’’) filed its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007. There was a decimal point missing in a table on page 23 of the Form 10-K.
Under the table entitled ‘‘Analysis of Consolidated Loss and Loss Expense Reserve Development Net of Reinsurance Recoverables’’ in the column for the period as at December 31, 2002, the figure for ‘‘Cumulative paid losses, net of reinsurance recoveries, as of: Five years later’’ should be $61.9 million rather than $619 million.
$557.1m here and $557.1m there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Funny that us lazy journalists, or that legion of highly paid equity analysts, didn’t spot it then!
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Hot Diggitty Dam!tag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.500612008-03-06T16:00:52Z2008-03-06T16:17:32ZOur New recruit Alex Ferguson writes: In my time covering the (re)insurance business I’ve seen some interesting twists and turns in the wild ways of PR. There was the external PR girl who decided it might be a good idea...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Alex Ferguson writes:
In my time covering the (re)insurance business I’ve seen some interesting twists and turns in the wild ways of PR.
There was the external PR girl who decided it might be a good idea to pump out a press release just after an oil refinery had blown up in the USA, killing 15 and injuring over 100.
The release was to remind us what fabulous energy insurance broking services her client offered in the wake of such a disaster.
The problem? Her client already did a huge amount of business with the oil company who owned the refinery!
Then there’s one about the chief executive who despises being called a reinsurer – or a (re)insurer, despite the fact that he writes some reinsurance and even retro.
But Willis – yes, readers, the same broker that encouraged its own to wear garish badges telling everyone who would listen to ‘Bring it On!’ went one better when I read their press release yesterday:
“Willis China Appointed Insurance Consultant for the Operational Assets of the World’s Largest Hydropower Project, the Three Gorges Dam”
Sorry, was that the Three Gorges Dam?
The same one that displaced around 1.4m people from their homes and, (if you listen to the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation anti-everything protest brigade) almost drove a species of rare dolphin into extinction?
We don’t wish to pry, but surely on the very same day the firm managed to get off the Burma 'dirty list'
(apparently, the sandal-wearing veggie-munchers weren’t too happy about Willis doing business in such a politically volatile area), was it the world’s best idea for Joe Plumeri, Willis’ chairman and CEO to write how proud he was to be associated with:
“…one of the greatest engineering feats of the twenty-first century”?
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Celebrity modelling death matchtag:www.blog-re.com,2008://8.500572008-03-06T11:17:30Z2008-03-06T13:09:19ZDear friend, Has black become white and white become black? Has the world gone crazy? Have we gone crazy? This is what we ask ourselves at Reinsurance Towers as we sit down, turn on our computers and gawp at the...Mark Geogheganhttp://www.blog-re.com
Emma cost between €300m and €700m.
Quite a wide margin of error, you might think, and fair enough, since the storm only blew through at the weekend, affecting multiple countries etc etc.
But then AIR says it probably cost €750m - €1.3bn.
So you see my dilemma - there's not even an overlap between one and the other!
They are mutally exclusive. One is from Mars and the other is from Venus.
It suddenly reminded me of a line from a Dire Straits song (don't ask how!) called Industrial Disease about street preachers at London's famous Speakers' Corner.
"Two men say they're Jesus - one of them must be wrong!"
So, which of these two technological evangelists are we supposed to believe?
Do we believe A and not B?
or B and ignore A?
Or just conlcude that both are probably wrong.
Faith in modelling is hard won and easily frittered away.
But modelling firms can so often be their own worst enemy.
Maybe it's time to climb down from the soap box?
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In my time covering the (re)insurance business I’ve seen some interesting twists and turns in the wild ways of PR.
There was the external PR girl who decided it might be a good idea to pump out a press release just after an oil refinery had blown up in the USA, killing 15 and injuring over 100.
The release was to remind us what fabulous energy insurance broking services her client offered in the wake of such a disaster.
The problem? Her client already did a huge amount of business with the oil company who owned the refinery!
Then there’s one about the chief executive who despises being called a reinsurer – or a (re)insurer, despite the fact that he writes some reinsurance and even retro.
But Willis – yes, readers, the same broker that encouraged its own to wear garish badges telling everyone who would listen to ‘Bring it On!’ went one better when I read their press release yesterday:
“Willis China Appointed Insurance Consultant for the Operational Assets of the World’s Largest Hydropower Project, the Three Gorges Dam”
Sorry, was that the Three Gorges Dam?
The same one that displaced around 1.4m people from their homes and, (if you listen to the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation anti-everything protest brigade) almost drove a species of rare dolphin into extinction?
We don’t wish to pry, but surely on the very same day the firm managed to get off the Burma 'dirty list'
(apparently, the sandal-wearing veggie-munchers weren’t too happy about Willis doing business in such a politically volatile area), was it the world’s best idea for Joe Plumeri, Willis’ chairman and CEO to write how proud he was to be associated with:
“…one of the greatest engineering feats of the twenty-first century”?
]]>