TOKYO - Taisei Fire and Marine Insurance Co has become the first Japanese company to go under directly as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, after it filed for insolvency, equivalent to bankruptcy for a regular company, with the Tokyo District Court on Thursday. Company sources disclosed that the midsize casualty-insurance company had a negative net worth of 39.8 billion yen ($US324.7 million) at the end of September due to massive payouts in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Taisei president Ichiro Ozawa told a news conference that the company, which sold reinsurance on the airplanes used in the terrorist assaults, had total payments of 74.4 billion yen connected to the attacks. "An accident involving an airplane crashing in the middle of New York was not something we had included in our calculations," said Ozawa, who admitted that Taisei had not been aware of the risk because it had not checked the contracts made by its overseas agent. "We left it to the overseas agent to decide," he said.
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===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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