reports Kemper's battle to get a judicial review of a General Electric insurer's incorporation in Bermuda has been sent back to Bermuda's courts.

Britain's Privy Council yesterday ruled that the Bermuda Court of Appeal had jurisdiction to hear a Kemper appeal. Kemper wants to appeal a ruling which stymied the company's efforts to get a judicial review of the incorporation of Electric Mutual Liability Insurance Co. Ltd. (EMLICO).

The decision is an important step in Kemper's goal of actually getting the judicial review underway, but there are some more court cases along the way before that occurs.

Yesterday's decision has to do with Kemper's assertion that Bermuda's Registrar of Companies and Finance Minister should not have allowed EMLICO to incorporate on the Island.

Kemper had originally been given Supreme Court permission to seek judicial review of the regulatory decisions taken by the Registrar and the Minister allowing EMLICO's incorporation in 1995.

That permission was later set aside by another judge. Kemper then appealed the decision to set aside the permission, but the Court of Appeals ruled it did not have the authority to hear such an appeal.

Kemper took its case to the Privy Council, Bermuda's highest court of appeal, which has now ruled the Court of Appeals should hear the Kemper's appeal of the decision to set aside permission for judicial review.

EMLICO moved from Massachusetts to Bermuda in 1995 and then filed for liquidation four months later with potentially billions in claims which the company's reinsurers are on the hook for. Kemper wants EMLICO's liquidation to be done in Massachusetts where it believes it will have more control over the claims payout.

In January, in an apparently irreversible decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that state insurance commissioner Linda Ruthardt had no authority to approve the move.

Meanwhile, EMLICO's joint liquidators said of yesterday's ruling they will proceed with the winding up process already underway. The joint liquidators received succour from another Privy Council ruling that they had "properly sought'' an order by Bermuda's Supreme Court authorising them to continue with the winding-up of EMLICO in Bermuda.

"The order was properly sought by the joint liquidators for their personal protection in the courts of Bermuda in case it should later be held that Kemper was right and that the winding-up proceedings were not properly constituted,'' the five members of the Privy Council stated in their ruling.

Kemper fight referred back to Bermuda "No doubt the Chief Justice would not have made such an order unless he was at any rate provisionally of the opinion that EMLICO remained a Bermuda company, but the order is not binding upon any other person and the matter remains open for argument in the courts of Bermuda.'' The joint liquidators stated in a press release they believed the Bermuda Court of Appeal would affirm the decision to set aside the grant of judicial review.

The Bermuda liquidators are David Lines and Peter Cooper of Coopers & Lybrand Bermuda, and their UK partner Christopher Hughes.