Endurance will keep on nearly half of the worldwide staff of its new acquisition Montpelier Reinsurance, The Royal Gazette has learned.

The deal closed on Endurance’s takeover of its fellow Bermuda-based insurer and reinsurer last Friday.

Montpelier had 185 full-time employees as of the end of last year, according to a regulatory filing. About a third of those are based in Bermuda.

Talks are going on this week between Endurance bosses and their newly acquired workforce at Montpelier.

Endurance chairman and chief executive officer John Charman sent out a letter to employees last Friday, the day the acquisition deal closed.

“While it has taken a lot of effort to get to this point, there is still much to be done,” Mr Charman wrote. “As you are aware, we have been working diligently to plan the integration of our two organisations for several months, and we will now begin the immediate process of integrating staff, underwriting operations, infrastructure and processes so that we can execute the transition as quickly and seamlessly as possible for all parties.

“Over the next few days, we will be meeting with each Montpelier employee to discuss their employment status. While we have identified a number of areas of overlap and opportunities to streamline the organisation, we have identified areas in both our underwriting segments and corporate functions where the skills and capabilities of Montpelier staff will be of great value to our company.”

While sources have revealed Endurance will retain nearly half the Montpelier staff overall, this newspaper was unable to obtain more specific information on the Bermuda-based employees.

Montpelier had three underwriting segments — Montpelier Bermuda, Montpelier at Lloyd’s and Collateralised Reinsurance — and it would seem that most of the overlap with existing Endurance operations will be in Bermuda, where the company focuses on writing on writing short-tail US and international catastrophe treaty reinsurance under the Montpelier Re name.

Having a presence in the Lloyd’s of London market is something new for Endurance. Syndicate 5151 will do business as Endurance at Lloyd’s.

The collateralised reinsurance segment is marketed under the name of Blue Capital, which manages third-party capital and which has its own listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange as Blue Capital Reinsurance Holdings Ltd.

Montpelier also had some subsidiaries in the US, including MTR, which provides a range of back-office operations to much of the rest of the group from its New Hampshire offices, and Cladium, a managing general agency based in Florida.