SatelliteFinance understands that space insurance underwriter elseco is close to opening a new office in the United States, either in New York or Washington DC.
The insurer is headquartered at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DFIC) and has…
SatelliteFinance understands that space insurance underwriter elseco is close to opening a new office in the United States, either in New York or Washington DC.
The insurer is headquartered at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DFIC) and has operations in London and Paris.
The elseco space department was created in 2007 and has a 2015 capacity of US$100m per launch / in-orbit risk, although according to sources would normally commit to between US$20-US$30m per risk.
It is a managing general agent, meaning that elseco acts as an agent for a group of insurers underwriting space insurance on their behalf. The MGA charges a fee for this as well as and making commission on any profit made.
The new US office means that elseco will have new capacity coming from insurers in the US who want to write space risk but do not want to do so themselves.
elseco was founded by Laurent Lemaire and Pierre-Eric Lys, two former space insurers. Lemaire was a broker with International Space Brokers (now Aon ISB) and then became an underwriter at SATEC, while Lys founded insurer SpaceCo having previously worked at Airbus and Thales.
Lys took elseco and Lemaire to court in mid-2014 claiming for loss and damages after he said he was fired as chief financial officer without good cause or notice on 11 February 2014.
The background to the case was complicated by the fact that Lys had sold his 50% shareholding in elseco to Lemaire in June 2011. The purchase price was calculated by reference to the retained earnings for the years 2010 to 2013, a period when Lys was CFO.
In November 2014, the judge Justice Sir David Steel dismissed the defendant’s application to strike out part of the claim and on 8 March 2015, the DFIC court of first instance announced that the parties had agreed to an out of court settlement.
