Lloyd’s of London, shareholder value and the optimisation of capital

The timing could not have been better. On the day WIR interviews Charles Philipps, chief executive of the Lloyd’s based insurance group, Amlin, Standard & Poor’s restores the status of the market’s single-’A’ financial strength rating by taking it off CreditWatch where it had been relegated nine months before when S&P became concerned about the extent of Lloyd’s syndicates’ exposure to the events of 11 September. Unlike Moody’s, which controversially rates individual syndicates, S&P issues a financial security rating to the Lloyd’s market as a whole.