White Mountain's new Bermuda-based reinsurer has raised its $1 billion of targeted capital and has been named the company Montpelier Re, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

In an exclusive interview with the newspaper, the management of White Mountains hailed allowed the company's chief executive officer as "one of the three kings of Lloyds", Tony Taylor.

Mr. Taylor is currently with Wellington Management Group, and will be taking up his post as CEO and chief underwriting officer at the beginning of January when he begins his contract.

The offices will be in the old ACE headquarters at Woodbourne Avenue with Pitts Bay Road and will have about ten employees in the first year, increasing in size to between 25 and 30 in the following two to three years.

"We stand ready to bring the king of Lloyds to Bermuda," said Jack Byrne, who will become Chairman of the new company and is currently Chairman of White Mountains and Chairman of OneBeacon Insurance Group.

"The Wall Street newspaper last week called him one of the three kings of Lloyds and we can't figure out who the other two are. He has a wonderful track record as an underwriter at Lloyds with the Wellington Management Group so we put it all together.

"Tony is going to be the chief underwriting officer and the chief executive officer of a new Bermuda company called Montpelier. And we have raised a billion dollars of fresh capital on Wall Street and we know and love the Bermuda market and know which brokers and underwriters we can trust."

The company is one of six new insurance companies to set up on the Island since the September 11 attacks and have a joint target capital of $5.7 billion.

Mr. Taylor said the company already had been granted a licence to operate and were expecting to close on the overall transaction on December 10.

"I think we will then be in the position to, if you like, put lines down," said Mr. Taylor. "Bermuda has granted our licence and we have some people to start doing business right away. We haven't hired anyone in Bermuda yet. We are moving very quickly and we hope to have that done during the month of December."

On November 2 this year White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd., which is based in Bermuda, announced it was seeking to establish a new Bermuda-based property and casualty reinsurer to respond to "the current favourable underwriting and pricing environment in the insurance and reinsurance industry".

Yesterday more details were released to The Royal Gazette, that confirm that the business will focus on property reinsurance through the broker market an may go into retrocession insurance.

Mr. Taylor is formerly deputy chairman of Wellington Holdings plc., a publicly traded Lloyd's underwriting vehicle and has 25 years of experience in the worldwide reinsurance business.

Bank of America Securities LLC and Benfield Advisory Limited, part of the Benfield Group plc., are acting as financial advisers to the company.