SIMON FASCIONE LEAVES LANCASHIRE IN SURPRISE DEPARTURE

Lancashire Insurance Co Ltd (LICL) Chief Underwriting Officer Simon Fascione is to leave Bermuda-based Lancashire Holdings "to pursue other opportunities". The announcement comes only a couple of weeks after Lancashire announced that Mr Fascione would be heading up the newly formed Lancashire Capital Management (LCM). Lancashire CEO Richard Brindle confirmed the company's continued commitment to LCM, with Mr Brindle himself taking over the day-to-day management of the new venture. He said that "of course I'm sorry to see one of the team leave and I wish him all the best. As with all we do at Lancashire, the LCM project is a group effort which has contributions from our underwriting, actuarial, finance and operational teams". Thanking Mr Fascione for his contributions, Group Chief Underwriting Officer Alex Maloney said that Lancashire was "actively engaged in LCM discussions with partners, some of whom we've known for a while and some of whom we're getting to know. We will continue with our plans to build out the staffing of LCM". Lancashire Capital Management was formed to build on recent innovations from Lancashire in the third-party capital field, including the sidecars Accordion and Saltire. At the time of its unveiling Mr Brindle said that "we are actively engaged in the further development of these types of opportunities under the banner of Lancashire Capital Management. We are careful only to develop products we believe in and to ensure that these projects don't distract us from the 'mothership'." Mr Fascione joined Lancashire in 2006 and, in his role as CUO at LICL, was responsible for handling the Reinsurance and Retrocession portfolios.