It appears to be the end of the road for financially troubled Bermuda insurer Trenwick, now faced with Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Bermuda, the US, UK and Barbados.

The wind-up of beleaguered Trenwick followed its second round of defaults earlier this month on debt agreements it had with senior note holders. In April of this year the company was facing an initial default on that debt but was thrown a lifeline by creditors who agreed to give the company until this month to pay its $75 million debt.

Despite closing down the business, there are plans to sell off Trenwick's one remaining operating unit - two Lloyd's syndicates bearing the name of Trenwick Managing Agents - to management. A company Press release last week cited the arrangement as an "exclusive negotiation agreement" with the management team of its Lloyd's operations pending "due diligence" by investor Englefield Capital.

Trenwick Managing Agents is understood to underwrite specialty insurance as well as treaty and facultative reinsurance on a worldwide basis. It was the one Trenwick unit still actively writing business. The company effectively ceased all other business last year after deals reached to hand over in-force business to competitors.

In a 2002 arrangement hatched with new Bermuda company Endurance, Trenwick effected a 100 percent quota share reinsurance agreement that handed over all in-force business from Trenwick's property catastrophe subsidiary LaSalle Re. The company also gave up writing US Specialty business after reaching an agreement with Chubb Re.

It is understood that the company nearly had to back away from writing any business through its Lloyd's syndicates this year but its eleventh hour brokering of a deal with letters of creditors late last year allowed it to stay in that business a little longer.

The company's demise comes on the heels of significant financial woes. In the last year, its stock plummeted to trading below a dollar after it posted a third quarter, 2002 net loss of $140 million only to follow that with $198.1 million loss in the fourth quarter and a $386.1 million loss for the 2002 financial year.

Its poor stock performance saw it taken off the New York Stock Exchange and relegated to the Over the Counter (OTC) stock market where its shares were yesterday trading at a value of three cents. Trenwick's 52-week high stood at $6 and its 52-week low was as low as it could go at one cent.

Last year the company was also delisted from the Bermuda Stock Exchange, the S&P 500 and its poor financial performance and questions about its ability to continue as a going concern prompted rating agencies to either downgrade Trenwick's financial strength ratings or withdraw them entirely.

Chief financial officer Alan Hunte did not return calls from The Royal Gazette for additional information.