people, the group's spokesman said yesterday.

"Membership is growing as anticipated,'' said lawyer Tim Marshall.

The association was formed last Thursday to defend against legal action by liquidators of defunct Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company Ltd.

Under the 1991 Bermuda Fire & Marine re-organisation, approved by the Supreme Court of Bermuda, all assets and liabilities related to that company's domestic operations were transferred to various subsidiaries.

Subsequent to the transfer, shares of the BF&M subsidiaries held by Bermuda Fire & Marine were distributed via a dividend in specie to Bermuda Fire & Marine's existing shareholders.

The re-organisation left the international operations with Bermuda Fire & Marine, a company estimated to be insolvent by about $500 million.

In a release yesterday, liquidators said that they will complete sending out letters serving writs upon shareholders by the end of this week.

Liquidators also said: The Appeals Court will not, as suggested, be concerned in the hearing on March 4, 1996 with the question of service on the shareholders. That issue has been finally determined in the joint liquidators' favour. The March hearing is an attempt by BF&M to overturn the Supreme Court's decision throwing out its application to have certain paragraphs of the writ and statement of claim struck out.

While it is correct that the documents sent to shareholders included a blank stock transfer form to assist the shareholders if they wished to retransfer their holdings in BF&M to Bermuda Fire & Marine, this action was taken pursuant to a direction obtained from the Court on November 30, 1995.

The letter from the attorneys to the joint liquidators which accompanied the letter sent to shareholders stated expressly that shareholders should take independent legal advice before taking any action, if they were uncertain about the documents sent to them.