Emerging insurance losses were the focus of several of 2009'stop stories for the E&S/specialty lines segment--with a Ponzischemer, a pandemic and an imported product bringing unexpectedexposures into focus this year.

While the continuing soft market and a down economy had the mostimmediate impacts on business for excess and surplus lines andspecialty brokers and insurers over the past 12 months, theunexpected appearance of Bernard Madoff, Chinese drywall and H1N1in our e-newsletter this year pushed articles about this trio tothe top of our subjective list of the key developments for2009.

Mr. Madoff's Dec. 11, 2008 arrest would actually come the dayafter we selected our Top-10 E&S/specialty lines insurancestory list for 2008, and we began reporting on the specialtyinsurance industry ramifications in the lead article of our January2009 edition. The insurance impacts are still being assessed, asevidenced by an article on potential fiduciary liability insuranceimplications in this edition.