Bloomberg - Catlin Group Ltd., a Bermuda-based specialty re/insurer, plans an initial public offering worth as much as $450 million to support its underwriting and general business.

Founded in 1984 by Chief Executive Stephen Catlin, 49, the company comprises a Bermuda property insurer and a business at Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurance market.

Catlin said it will sell $200 million of new stock. Existing investors will sell as much as $250 million of their stakes, bankers said.

The offering comes as the pace of initial stock sales picks up after a three-year slump. Companies globally have raised about $11.2 billion in IPOs so far this year, compared with about $2 billion in the same period last year.

Catlin, which underwrote $1.2 billion of premiums in 2003, will use funds raised in the share sale to boost capital.

"We need more capital to keep the growth going," Stephen Catlin said in a telephone interview. Since 1988, Catlin has consistently outperformed the Lloyd's market as a whole, he said.

The company will be valued at 700 million pounds ($1.3 billion) to 800 million pounds, bankers said. The shares will trade on the London Stock Exchange after the offering is completed by early April, Catlin said.

The company's subsidiary Catlin Underwriting Agencies Ltd. manages Lloyd's of London syndicate 2003, which provides coverage for professional indemnity, cargo ships, aviation and satellites.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG are managing Catlin's share sale.

Catlin's shareholders include J.P. Morgan's Corsair II Capital Partners funds, and New York-based buyout firm Cypress Group LLC, according to Catlin's Web site. The investors participated in Catlin's $482 million funding round in 2002.

With the sale Catlin joins other companies such as Alea Group Holdings Ltd., an insurer controlled by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and Bermuda-based reinsurer Montpelier Re Holdings Ltd. in raising funds to take advantage of premium growth and a stock- market rebound.

Alea raised 165 million pounds in November to fund new business. Montpelier Re raised $190 million in October in an IPO in New York.

Bermuda-based reinsurer Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. raised $220.8 million in an initial public offering and listing on the New York Stock Exchange in February.

Some analysts have said the increase in insurance rates is slowing down, cooling the growth that followed the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Premium rates "may be flat" in 2005 after rising as much as 25 percent for liability insurance and falling as much as 10 percent in property insurance, last year, said Catlin.

"It will be a struggle to get the attention of investors," KBC Peel Hunt Plc analyst Charles Coyne said in a telephone interview. "The timing could have been better."

Catlin said it had net income of $127 million last year, compared with a net loss of $11.7 million in 2002. Its gross premium income jumped 66 percent to $1.2 billion. Catlin's combined ratio fell to 86.9 percent last year, from 113.8 percent.