Bermuda-based Allied World Assurance Company Holdings Ltd. has repurchased $250 million of its common shares from some of the company's founding shareholders.

The company bought five million shares from affiliates of US banking giant Goldman Sachs, including GS Capital Partners and other investment funds, it announced late on Sunday.

Allied World, which last week announced second-quarter earnings of $184 million, has repurchased five million common shares at $50 per share.

The purchase price represented approximately a 0.5 percent discount to the company's closing stock price of $50.23 last Friday.

The repurchase represents approximately 9.4 percent of the diluted common shares outstanding as of June 30, 2010.

Following the repurchase, the Goldman Sachs affiliates hold approximately 3.16 million non-voting shares of Allied World, or approximately 7.2 percent of the company's total outstanding common shares.

The repurchase was executed separately from the company's $500 million share repurchase programme that was authorised by its board of directors in May 2010. The transaction was funded using available cash on hand.

Allied World was one of several reinsurers to set up in Bermuda in late 2001, following the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC.