Two senior QBE Re managers were at the reinsurance industry’s most important meeting last year when the parent company halted trading in its shares. It would have been a bad moment. Last year treaty Division Manager Desmond Fogarty and European Operations CEO Paul Glen were at Baden Baden in Germany, where reinsurers gather each year to cut renewal deals, when the news came through, according to financial services magazine Reactions.

Mr Fogarty said in an interview in Monaco during the recent Reinsurance Rendezvous: “We proved we are here for the long term and we are stronger than many people gave us credit for.”

Mr Glen told Reactions QBE is gradually moving away from writing proportional business, and the strategy has paid off. “If you take the European floods, for example, we have not been badly hit because we are not writing much proportional business in that region now.”