Third Point Reinsurance Ltd debuted as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, raising around $276 million in its initial public offering (IPO).Chief executive officer John Berger, together with co-founder and hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb rang the opening bell on Wall Street yesterday, as the company sold 22.1 million shares at $12.50 apiece.Trading was brisk throughout the day, with nearly 13.6 million of the company’s shares changing hands, as the new issue closed at $13.06, up 4.5 percent.The shares were up strongly on a day when the KBW Insurance Index fell 1.5 percent.The IPO price was at the bottom end of the previously declared range of $12.50 to $14.50. We were unable to contact Mr Berger for comment yesterday.Third Point Re, based in offices on Pitts Bay Road, was one of several hedge fund-backed reinsurers to set up on the Island in 2011. Mr Loeb’s Third Point LLC manages the company’s $900 million investment portfolio.While traditional reinsurers manage their pools of capital very conservatively, largely in fixed-income securities, the hedge fund-backed companies like Third Point Re put more of their money into riskier assets like equities, while taking less risk on the underwriting side of the business. According to regulatory filings, about half of Third Point Re’s investments were in stocks and 40 percent were in bonds as of June 30.Alex Ibrahim, vice-president and regional head of Latin America, Bermuda and the Caribbean of NYSE Euronext, said the company would enjoy numerous benefits from trading its shares on the Exchange.The company would have access to the depth of US capital markets on an exchange which trades more than $52 billion per day, he told The Royal Gazette.“It’s a festive occasion for the company, a moment of celebration for its shareholders, employees and partners,” Mr Ibrahim said.“The executives of Third Point Re and Third Point, and their bankers, had breakfast here this morning and then some of the executives went up to the platform to ring the opening bell at 9.30am.“We have 36 media outlets here at the Exchange and the ringing of the bell is screened around the world. It will be great for Third Point Re’s visibility.”Mr Ibrahim added that there were 21 Bermuda-based companies trading on the NYSE, the majority of them in the re/insurance sector.A year ago, Mr Berger told this newspaper that the Third Point Re investors’ plan was always to go public one day. He said this would happen when three factors aligned, namely reinsurers’ stock market valuations rising closer to book value, Third Point doing a good job managing the reinsurer’s assets and the firm producing sound underwriting results.The pre-IPO filings show Third Point Re posted $100.7 million in net income in the six months through June 30, compared with $99.4 million in all of 2012, as the reinsurer lowered its underwriting costs. The company spent about $1.08 on claims and expenses for every premium dollar it collected in the six months through June 30, down from $1.30 last year.Bloomberg reported that the major stakeholders in the reinsurer include affiliates of private-equity firms Kelso & Co and Pine Brook Road Partners LLC, adding that Mr Loeb was set to own about 8.5 percent of the firm after the offering. Neither Mr Loeb nor the private-equity firms had planned to sell in the IPO.JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup were among the banks that managed Third Point Re’s offering.