merger, but chairman and CEO, Victor Blake, has conceded that significant share holdings in the company by Aon and CNA may have put some potential suitors off.

Mr. Blake is reported in Reactions magazine's Rendez-vous Reporter as saying that the recent dramatic consolidation in the Bermuda market was "pretty well anticipated.'' Editions of the publication were circulated daily last week during Rendez-vous de Septembres, the annual reinsurance conference in Monte Carlo.

The poor state of the catastrophe market, said Mr. Blake, meant several companies realised they could not maintain the level of shareholder returns and would have to merge.

He said the speculation about LaSalle Re's future came as a result of misinterpretation of the reinsurer's statement that it was looking for a partner.

LaSalle Re, while not specifically looking for a merger partner, was keeping its options open in the event the right partner came along.

Mr. Blake said, "We are not courting at the moment, but we are receptive to offers. While it has taken longer than we anticipated to find a partner, that is not a problem.'' The support of Aon and CNA, he said, was valuable.

But he noted, "We would have hoped that our statement would have made clear that we don't want people to be put off by our links with these giants. We see those links as being an advantage, not a drawback.'' In the same edition, PartnerRe president and CEO, Herbert Haag, did not deny his company paid full price of some $750 million in cash for its acquisition of Winterthur Re, which will double PartnerRe's size.

PartnerRe faced competition for Winterthur from two other prospective bidders.

"There was a desire for them (Winterthur) to be a part of our group,'' Mr.

Haag said. "The other bids were close, but were not comparable.'' And the more he looked at what Winterthur had to offer, the more he liked the fit. He said, "We saw immediately that it would give us a jump start in the US, a good organisational base from which to start our own build up. We also knew it had a life reinsurance company based in Dallas, which would give us instant access into the US market, a real added bonus.

"We were also pleasantly surprised to find out that the (Winterthur) Swiss operation had an extremely complementary business mix, compared to our own.

"It specialises in specialist lines, such as credit and surety, agricultural lines and aviation.'' Mr. Haag said the company realised that after four years of virtually no catastrophes, and more capacity returning to the market, including from Lloyd's, there were only two choices: to diversify into new lines of business or wind the company down.

"The opportunity for Safr came along and we took it. Once we did that, we could not go back to being a monoline again.'' Victor Blake CONFERENCE CON MAGAZINE NJ