Bermuda-based AlphaStar Insurance Group Limited is perilously close to being delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange for failing to file its annual report for 2002 on time.

The company has received a notice of delisting from NASDAQ and unless it requests an appeal, it will be delisted on April 28 (Monday).

An AlphaStar statement said that its 2002 10-K is nearly finished and should be filed within the next 10 days, once it has been reviewed by their auditors.

The company plans to appeal the delisting and hopes that if their 10-K is filed prior to the hearing, the appeal panel will grant their request for a continued listing. However they admitted that there can be no guarantee.

On a more positive note, the company announced they have won an appeal at the New York State Supreme Court.

The verdict unanimously affirmed an earlier jury verdict dismissing all of the claims asserted against AlphaStar, its London subsidiary Stirling Cooke Brown Reinsurance Brokers and one of its former employees.

The jury verdict initially had been handed down in December 2001 in an action brought by AXA Reassurance S.A. and New Hampshire Insurance Company. In that action, the plaintiffs asserted claims of fraud and negligent misrepresentation in the placement of reinsurance contracts entered into in connection with certain "reinsurance-backed gap film financing".

The action was the first "film finance" case to go to trial among the more than 50 such cases now pending around the world involving, according to some observers, more than $1.5 billion in potential coverage.