Argonaut Buys Fulcrum Renewals

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Argonaut is a San Antonio-based holding company with specialty insurance companies based in California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

Argonaut has been fairly active on the acquisition front in that past year.

Last year, Argonaut acquired Front Royal, Inc., another insurance holding company with its two excess and surplus insurers and a managing general underwriter.

In addition, a deal, which Argonaut announced last April to acquire four specialty insurance subsidiaries of Queensway Financial Holdings, a Canadian insurance holding company, fell through in Aug. 2001.

When those negotiations collapsed, Argonaut explained that the parties were unable to satisfy certain conditions to closing within the time frame set out in their original agreement, following the appointment of a receiver for Queensway by a Canadian court.

Commenting on the acquisition of Fulcrum in a statement, Argonaut President and Chief Executive Officer Mark E. Watson III said the acquisition continues the expansion of Argonaut Group as a national specialty underwriter.

Mr. Watson said the Fulcrum business "compliments the existing lines of business written through our excess and surplus subsidiary, Colony Insurance Group. Colony will serve as the parent entity for the newly acquired operations, which will remain based in Arizona."

John Latham, president of Colony added, "The Fulcrum acquisition will provide us a second platform for serving the surplus lines market throughout the United States."

Mr. Latham said that Colony intends to employ the staff of Fulcrum as Fulcrum Underwriting Managers, Inc. and to operate this apart from Colony to afford a market alternative.

In late February, Argonaut also announced the formation of a new captive business unit, Captive Advisory Services Inc.

Paris-based SCOR announced that it was pulling out of the U.S. program business market in January of this year.