So July is now well and truly on us and as per usual the reinsurance world has gone on holiday

For those of us without a yacht or summer residence to escape to there has still been plenty to entertain us with the ongoing Deepwater Horizon saga - the lawyers are salivating already.

The reinsurance forums on LinkedIn have lit up with a great number of comments as the industry debates what the overall effect of the disaster will be with an overall consensus that we may well see a shift in the way that captive insurers and reinsurers operate as fully risk retained captives may become very unfashionable - particularly in the energy world.

There's also the consensus that the legal battles will run on for years, especially the class actions, so the real winner - as per usual - will be the lawyers.

On a lighter note blog-re has been nominated as a Top 50 Insurance Law Blog through the LexisNexis Law Community. If you are a legal eagle and enjoy our blog please give us a vote here http://bit.ly/beDC27

Have a good week

Recently is would seem that everyone in the reinsurance world has been relocating operations to Switzerland.

So what is the attraction? Solvency II? The tax regime?

We at Reinsurance Towers think that's just not fun enough so here are our top reasons that we think the reinsurers just aren't telling you about:

1) The Alps. Good to look at but more importantly, just the place to unwind with some skiing after a hard January renewals season

2) Hornussen. A cross between baseball and golf. It's a bit like trying to catch golf balls flying through the air at 300kph

3) The schnapps. Nom nom nom

4) The cool mountain air. With the UK and eastern States in the middle of a sweltering heat wave these past few weeks it sounds good to us

5) Martina Hingis and Roger Federer - not too hard on the eye and apparently pretty good at tennis too

6) Alpine horns and yodeling, much more fun than you'd think - yodelayeeeooo