...cash and charity
BEFORE Lloyd's can plan its future, though, it needs to make sure that it will have one. It has a civil war on its hands. Until the other day the council was seen to be flying a flag of truce, offering a cease- fire to cover an ambulance service for the hardest hit. Now the firing has resumed, but Lloyd's is trying to divert it. Of the £2 billion loss, almost half is concentrated on a handful of syndicates — and where are their members to find that sort of money? Some will try to recoup their losses by suing their agents, who in turn would claim on their own insurance for errors and omis- sions. That would spread part of the loss over other Lloyd's syndicates — more than 100 of them — but part of it was insured outside Lloyd's, with big reinsurers on the Continent.There will be substantial calls on the extra £500 million which Lloyd's is call- ing up for its central fund — with the pro- fessionals, I am pleased to learn, paying their whack. Lloyd's will still need to be more open-handed with its hardship pay- ments. The chief almoner, Mary Archer, has told the ruined members that she would let them subsist in remote villages. We can- not all live in Grantchester, like the lordly and ladylike Archers, but the members deserve better than humiliation.
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