QBE has announced a profit dip of 7% for the first half of the year ending June 30, blaming substantially weaker equity markets and the strengthening of the Australian dollar.

And CEO Frank O’Halloran has made it very clear the group won’t be attempting a second shot at taking over IAG – at least not for a while.

Profit after tax, including net realised and unrealised capital losses on equities, was $859 million, down from $921 million in the first half of 2007.

Yet the global giant’s combined operating ratio improved to 85.8%, compared to 86.2% in 2007. Gross written premium also rose by 1% to $6.6 billion and gross earned premium increased by 4% to $6 billion.

After walking away from its proposal to merge with IAG and seemingly shrugging off what might have been, Australia’s largest insurer is focusing its acquisition energies on Europe, the US and Latin America to help reach an expected annual profit of $1.9 billion.

Mr O’Halloran says QBE has reached agreement on eight acquisitions this year to date “which are expected to contribute net written premium income and incremental profit after tax of $550 million and $160 million respectively in the first full year”.

And he made it clear QBE won’t be coming back to IAG with another merger proposal.

“We don’t dwell on the past when it comes to acquisitions,” he said. “We’ve gone out and spent some money on PMI [the regional interests of the global mortgage insurer have been sold to QBE for around $1 billion] and we’ve got a pipeline of acquisitions we’re looking at.”

QBE expects gross written premium to be around $12.5 billion and net earned premium to be around $10.8 billion for 2008.