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Validus on the hook for up to $65m for cruise ship disaster

Tragedy: The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia lies on its side after it ran aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy

Bermuda-based insurer Validus Holdings Ltd said it may be on the hook for $50 million to $65 million for the Costa Concordia shipwreck, according to its 2011 earnings results.Validus’s estimate of its own losses are based on its prediction that the total insured payout on the shipwreck will be $845 million to $950 million, meaning the Bermuda-based company expects to shoulder about 15 percent of the industry-wide loss.The Costa Concordia ran aground and came to rest on its side off the Tuscan island of Giglio on January 13 after the ship’s captain veered from his approved course and gashed the ship’s hull on a reef. More than a dozen people are confirmed dead.Carnival Corp, the parent of the company that operated the Costa Concordia, said this week the wreck will lower its own net income by $155 million to $175 million in fiscal 2012.For Validus, the estimated loss is in the neighbourhood of its $54.1 million fourth-quarter net loss from flooding in Thailand. The insurance industry is estimated to be on the hook for $10 billion to $12 billion in Thai losses, making it one of the most expensive disasters in a catastrophe-heavy year.The Validus estimate of its Costa Concorida loss is also on par with the $52.4 million net loss in last year’s first quarter from the mooring failure of the Gryphon Alpha, a floating oil storage and offloading facility in the North Sea.But it’s much less than Validus’s $148.9 million in first-quarter losses from last year’s earthquake in Japan.Despite last year’s spate of disasters, Validus eked out net income of $27.3 million in 2011.