Dear friend,

What a stormer! A $425m property facility placed in London from Marsh.

If ever evidence was needed for a soft property market, then this surely is it.

London knows that from here on in, as cedants hang on to the good stuff, it's only going to be offered nasty mining risks, ropey textile mills and heavily cat-exposed everything, so it's time to fight back.

And what a fightback - a one-stop shop to rival anyone. London doesn't mind a good old fight for business and it has the brokers ready willing and able to pull the market together and bring it on.

Only thing is it better be good and keen or it's not going to do any biz.

Reminds me of the old International Fire Consortium (IFC).

I remember many fruitless hours standing in line by the boxes of the main binders as it slowly disintegrated in the post Hurricane Andrew slide.

Ah, these facilities - they're so shiny and new when they are constructed - you can just smell the freshly applied paint.

Today's technology should at leat help the followers have a reasonable idea of what they're writing, but they are tough to make work.

And there's something else here - I know it's mainly for US and Canada, but I promise not to tell Neelie Kroes if you don't.

She didn't say anything in her report about market-wide consortia specifically, but from what she did say in general we know she probably wouldn't like them if she knew about them, would she?