If catastrophes next year cause the formation of a "Class of 2008" of new insurance companies, not all of them would be formed in Bermuda, according to a panellist at yesterday's PricewaterhouseCoopers and Standard & Poor's Bermuda Insurance 2007 conference.

Robert Glanville is managing director of the financial services practice of Pine Brook Road Partners, a private equity company that was an investor in the start-ups of Bermuda-based Aeolus Re, Arch Capital, Catlin Group, Lancashire Holdings, Montpelier Holdings and RenaissanceRe.

Asked why he doubted that Bermuda would be the domicile of choice for new re/insurance companies, Mr. Granville said: "It's a function of other tax jurisdictions being competitive; they have learned the Bermuda advantage and are starting to mimic it somewhat effectively.

"It has to do with cost and the availability of talent and the availability to recruit talent."

Along with his comment about theoretical companies that might or might not be formed next year, Mr. Glanville spoke of his company's "new portfolio of three companies in which we have invested", all formed more recently than the companies mentioned above, which he did not name.

"Five years ago, all three would have been Bermuda companies," he said. "Today, only one of them is. The other two are domiciled in other offshore jurisdictions."

Bermuda "will continue to attract a sizeable percentage of new capital," Mr. Glanville said, "but Dubai, Ireland and other places have begun to pick up some of the attributes of Bermuda."

The other panelist alongside Mr. Glanville was Rob Jones, a managing director of Standard & Poor's. He agreed with the reasons Mr. Glanville mentioned, and added: "Lloyd's, Switzerland and Qatar, and certainly the Gulf may prove to be very attractive marketplaces."

Pressed on the question of why the potential "Class of 2008" or "Class of 2009" companies would not choose Bermuda, as every member of the Classes of 2001 and 2005 (bar one small start-up) did, Mr. Glanville said: "(Bermuda is) not making any more land. There are only so many visas available, apparently. It comes down to how comfortable investors like us feel."

Regulatory and political consistency matters, Mr. Glanville said, adding: "Other potential regulatory environments are newer and therefore look more consistent."