Paul Scrivener, head of the
insurance group at Cayman Islands law firm, Solomon Harris, takes a
look at the catastrophe bonds industry and the role played by the
Cayman Islands.
No doubt it raised a few eyebrows in
Bermuda when it was announced in July last year that new figures
revealed that the Cayman Islands had become the leading offshore
jurisdiction for listed catastrophe bonds ("cat bonds").
Even Bermuda's main newspaper, The Royal Gazette, was
forced to acknowledge that Bermuda had a lot of catching up to do
to match its offshore rival in the competition for cat bond
business. The July figures showed that there were 74 cat bonds
listed on the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange with a value of over
US$7.7 billion whereas, in contrast, Bermuda's own statistics
showed 10 listed bonds having an aggregate value of US$1.17
billion. For those involved in Cayman's structured finance and
captive insurance industries there was much less surprise as the
figures simply bore
