People: Do as the Romans

When Brian Marsh, the former Lloyd’s insurance underwriter who chairs insurance-oriented financial services backer BP Marsh, wants to cheer himself up, he goes to a performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. That gory drama of intrigue and strife in ancient Rome leaves the stage littered with distinguished corpses and, says Marsh, that is precisely what needs to happen in the London insurance market before premium rates can turn upwards again.

In common with other market players, BP Marsh (which lifted net assets by 4.3 per cent to £48.5 million between January and July and hoisted interim pre-tax profits 69.4 per cent to £2.32 million) is impatient for the long-awaited premium rate upturn. But, insists Marsh, ‘that will only happen when underwriting losses are so high that chief executives get fired’ and rates are increased.

BP Marsh takes significant minority stakes and board representation in (usually unquoted) niche companies with an international flavour, which he argues are relatively well insulated from inflation, recession and foreign exchange movements. At the end of July, the company’s biggest holding was 19.5 per cent of specialist Lloyd’s insurance broker and managing agent Hyperion Group, valued at £31.7 million, followed by a £5.2 million 48.6 per cent stake in consolidating Spanish insurance broker Summa, and a £4.2 million 34 per cent holding in North American insurance broker Besso Insurance, chaired by flamboyant senior Lloyd’s market figure Michael Wade.

Marsh, himself a controlling shareholder of BP Marsh, recently went to see Coriolanus. He says it struck an instant chord.