A total of 67 Bermudian-incorporated companies are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, after a first half of the year which The Bermuda Public Companies Update, published by law firm Conyers, reported that the two newcomers were Flex LNG Ltd and Watford Holdings Ltd.

The report found that the combined market capitalisation of the Bermudian companies on the NYSE and Nasdaq was $248 billion.

Flex LNG is an emerging player in the liquefied natural gas shipping business and is controlled by Norwegian shipping tycoon John Frederiksen.

Flex was the first listing of an ocean shipping company on a major US exchange in four years and “may be the first sign of an uptick in the shipping markets after several difficult years”, Conyers suggested.

Flex made a direct listing — in which the shares begin trading but no capital is raised — on the Nasdaq in June. It was already listed on Oslo stock exchange and is now dual-listed. As of yesterday, it had a market capitalisation of around $655 million.

Watford Holdings, parent company of Bermudian reinsurer Watford Re, began trading on the Nasdaq in June.

Watford’s subsidiaries operate as property, casualty and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies.

As of yesterday, Watford had a market capitalisation of around $553 million.

IHS Markit Ltd, a data analytics company, is the largest Bermudian-incorporated, US-listed company, the report states. Its market capitalisation is more than $26 billion.

Conyers noted that there had been a significant number of fixed-income and secondary offerings in the first six months of the year, including two tranches of senior unsecured notes offered by IHS Markit in April for a total value of $1 billion.

Total capital raised by US-listed, Bermudian companies in the first half of the year was $8.2 billion.

Dealmaking activity over the period included the acquisition by Bermudian-based Invesco of Oppenheimer Funds for $5.7 billion. Conyers advised Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company as seller on the deal.