Hundreds of millions of dollars were wiped off the value of Bermuda’s international companies yesterday as stocks plummeted around the world.

The Bermuda Insurance Index was down 1.9 percent on a day charatcterised by widespread panic trading which followed a 9 percent drop in China’s Shanghai Composite Index.

On Monday, Chinese stocks had reached record highs and yesterday’s fall was down to profit-taking and exacerbated by concerns that the Chinese government would take action to clamp down on trading speculators.

US stocks then plummeted too, with the benchmark S&P 500 index suffering its biggest one-day drop in almost four years after weak US data fanned concerns about global economic growth.

With an hour left to trade, the Dow Jones industrial average had fallen more than 500 points as investors pummelled stocks with the biggest exposure to Chinese demand. But by the close, the Dow had cut some of that loss, ending down by 3.29 percent, or 416 points. Yesterday’s sell-off wiped out the year’s gains for all three major US stock indexes. “There seems to be just an air of nothing is safe anymore, there’s nowhere to go and people are rotating into bonds as a safe haven,” said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group in Princeton, New Jersey.

Bermuda’s biggest insurance companies fared better than the Dow, with Ace’s stock value falling 2.3 percent and XL Capital losing 1.8 percent. Meanwhile, Max Re fell 3.7 percent, while Axis Capital tumbled 3.1 percent. Other Bermuda-based companies were hit much harder. ingersoll-Rand saw its share price plummet by more than 5 percent, while Tyco International fell more than 4 percent.

Stocks of shipping giant Frontline also dipped by 4.5 percent, on the day the company announced a slight year-on-year rise in fourth-quarter profits to some $134 million.