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S&P Global Market Intelligence offers our top picks of insurance news stories and more published throughout the week.
Industry news
* The underlying return on equity, or ROE, for a group of 19 of the world's top insurers and reinsurers has fallen after a continued deterioration in underwriting performance, according to a study by reinsurance broker Willis Re. The group, which includes the world's biggest four reinsurers, reported a collective underlying ROE of 2.7% in 2018, down from 3.8% in 2017, and now 4 points below the 6.7% the group reported in 2013, when Willis Re, part of Willis Towers Watson PLC, began the study.
* Commercial insurance buyers are dealing with upward pressure on pricing for most business lines for the rest of 2019 as insurers work on returning to underwriting profitability, according to Willis Towers Watson.
* Zurich-based catastrophe insurance data provider Perils AG said its initial loss estimate for extratropical cyclone Dragi-Eberhard is [euro]740 million. The event affected the British Isles and western and central Europe on March 9 and 10.
M&A talk
* SGAM Covéa is considering diversifying into reinsurance through acquisitions after it dropped its plan to buy Scor SE, Reuters reported. Covéa CEO Thierry Derez said he wanted the French co-operative insurer to enter reinsurance to "gain exposure to less...