No information was available late last night on the expected initial public offering of 9.6 million shares in Bermuda-headquartered Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd., suggesting that the issue did not complete in time yesterday for the stock to be traded during normal business hours.

Endurance was one of the largest new insurance companies to be formed in Bermuda following the events of September 11, 2001. It had priced its IPO at $25 to $27 a share, expecting to receive

Lead underwriters for the issue were Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. Underwriters for the issue were Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.

In a submission to the NASDAQ exchange, the company said that, assuming its ordinary shares were offered at an initial public offering price of $26.00, the net proceeds from the offering after deducting the estimated underwriting discount and our estimated offering expenses were estimated to be approximately $229.1 million (assuming no exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option) or approximately $263.9 million (assuming the full exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option).

The company intends to use the proceeds of the IPO to provide additional capital to its subsidiaries, to repay a portion of the outstanding debt under its credit facilities and for other general corporate purposes.

As of December 31, 2002, Endurance had $192 million of principal outstanding under its term loan facility. Of these borrowings, $100 million was used to purchase equity interests in Endurance previously owned by Zurich. The remaining $92 million was used as part of the contribution made to Endurance Bermuda in December 2002, which in turn made contributions to Endurance US and Endurance UK as part of their initial capitalisation.