CastlePoint Holdings became the first of Bermuda's "Class of 2005" reinsurance companies to go public when it released shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday and showed an immediate result for investors as the shares jumped in value by 11.38 percent on the first day of trading.

The day before it hit the market the company had made $111 million from its 7,682,238 common shares offering, which were priced at $14.50 each.

The offering price gave CastlePoint an initial market capitalisation of $517 million. When the market opened on Friday the value of its shares had already improved eight percent. By the end of the day they were worth $16.15, an improvement of $1.65 on a trading volume of 5,499,098.

Nearly all the shares available were being sold by CastlePoint, although 119,500 were being offered through existing shareholders.

CastlePoint is the first of Bermuda's 2005 reinsurance start-ups to go through with its initial public offering.

It filed its prospectus for an IPO in January and at that time expected to sell 6.1 million shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange for between $13 and $15 a share, raising between $79.3 million and $91.5 million.

The holding company through its subsidiaries CastlePoint Reinsurance, CastlePoint Management and CastlePoint Insurance provides property and casualty insurance and reinsurance primarily to small insurance companies and programme underwriting agents in the US.

It was formed in the wake of the record 2005 hurricane season in November of that year. In September 2006 CastlePoint reported net income of $3.74 million on total revenue of $55.5m.

Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co acted as the sole book-running manager, while the co-managers were Keefe, Bruyette & woods, Cochar Caronia Waller Securities and Piper Jaffray & Co.

CastlePoint's shares appear under the symbol CPHL.

Other Class of 2005 reinsurance companies in Bermuda expected to go public soon are Validus Holdings, which submitted its prospectus in January and said it could raise $200 million, and Flagstone Reinsurance which hopes to raise $159.2 million from its IPO, with shares expected to sell between $12.50 and $14.50.

Market commentators are expecting Flagstone Re to offer its shares during the coming week.