voluntarily wind up the company. Malcolm Butterfield of the Bermuda office of KPMG Peat Marwick has been appointed to carry out the liquidation.

The liquidation is being carried out as a result of the sale of Nobel's US operating subsidiaries to Bermuda-based RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. which paid $63 million for the companies.

The purchase was made for $54.1 million in cash and a limited recourse note of $8.9 million to support the liquidation. The principal US operating subsidiaries, Nobel Insurance Co. and IAS/CatCrew Inc., will continue to conduct business under their current names as subsidiaries of Renaissance US Holdings, Inc.

Nobel is a property and casualty underwriter for the explosives, specialty commercial trucking, propane, personal lines and surety bonds industries. For the first quarter of 1998 Nobel had a net loss of $590,000, a fall of 148 percent from the $1.21 million profit the company recorded in first quarter 1997.

At the time Nobel said the losses of 13 cents per share were due to claims from prior years that were now affecting the company's bottom line. Nobel also announced then it was selling a portion of its surety bond business for about $3.55 million, to be completed in the second quarter.

Nobel was founded about 20 years ago to insure explosive makers and was named for the Swedish inventor of dynamite. The company was a customer of RenaissanceRe before it sold the subsidiaries.