million worth of business while attending the Risk & Insurance Managers Society conference in San Francisco last week.

Max Re's founder, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Bob Cooney, said that he and his team attended over 100 meetings during the week-long event with prospective clients.

"RIMS is a great opportunity to discuss our business and meet contacts,'' he said yesterday on his return from San Francisco.

"We had some very positive interest indeed. In fact we have as many as a dozen transactions to look at as a direct result.

"The average premium is probably close to $4 or $5 million. Obviously we are not going to be successful in them all, but if we pick up two or three accounts it could mean $20 million potentially.'' Max Re was set up last year as the brainchild of Mr. Cooney, the former XL Insurance guru. Within a few months the business has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

In January Max Re was ranked as having excellent A minus financial strength by one of the world's top investment ratings services, A.M. Best.

The rating assignment followed the completion of an initial private offering by the insurer's parent organisation, Maximus Capital Holdings, Ltd., Bermuda, which raised $331 million.

Max Re had been working on getting funding to start the business since Mr.

Cooney left XL Insurance last July to set up the new company.

In October he was joined by Mr. Brining and together they have been making the financial future for the company secure.

They now have 15 staff in Bermuda and have just opened offices in Dublin. They currently have a new Dublin manager, and will be staffing this up to cater for the European market.

Max Re's operating activities focus on traditional, finite and specialty risk reinsurance of long-tailed liabilities that carry relatively predictable payout patterns--such as annuities, structured settlements, life insurance, disability income, workers' compensation and medical malpractice insurance.

Mr. Cooney said: "The business in doing extremely well. We have raised $511 million in equity, all from private investors.

"In an environment where the insurance stocks are not doing well, and cannot be classified as a dot com, we are pleased at the amount of capital raised.'' Mr. Cooney believes that the quality of the team at Max Re has brought forward a great number of investors as well as their strategies.

When asked if the company was interested in investing in e-commerce ventures, as Centre Solutions has done by backing Quo Vadis, he said: "We certainly have the ability to make strategic investments and to grow.'' But added: "At the moment our hands are pretty full with the core business -- but should the opportunity come along, we have the money.'' Mr. Cooney said that in the first year the company had was well on line to exceed the predicted $350 million premiums.

He said: "That is easily achievable.'' Mr. Cooney added: "I am very confident we will continue to build from this good work. To my knowledge we are one of the few recent start ups recently been capitalised.

"Bermuda is still the best jurisdiction in the world.

"We did not consider any other venue or jurisdiction when we were starting up.''