Max Capital’s failed attempt to merge with IPC Holdings in 2009 was all for the best because Max ended up much better off merging with Harbor Point Re instead.That is the view of Marty Becker, chief executive officer of Alterra Capital Holdings Ltd, the company formed last year by the Max-Harbor Point merger.Mr Becker also believes the market is “on the cusp of change” after a double-digit spike in property-catastrophe reinsurance rates for June 1 renewals.The Alterra boss made his comments in an interview with Meg Green, of BestWeek, which is published by ratings agency AM Best.After Max and IPC announced their planned merger two years ago, a third Bermuda reinsurer Validus Holdings Ltd, stepped in with an unsolicited counter-offer, and was ultimately successfully in acquiring IPC.“Fate’s a funny thing,” Mr Becker told BestWeek. “We ended up much better off.“It’s always difficult in the middle of a transaction to see what comes next, but in hindsight, we are so much better off for having done the transaction than we would have been had we done the IPC deal.”He added that the Harbor Point transaction was “not only a better price, but we brought on true diversified intellectual capital, which we weren’t going to get with IPC, which was a 100 percent property/cat company”.Harbor Point’s reinsurance portfolio helped to diversify the newly created Alterra, he said, noting the company’s book is about 60 percent reinsurance and 40 percent insurance.Mr Becker said there were no immediate plans for another merger or acquisition, but added: “I think at the moment the industry would probably benefit from a little M&A. We have a lot of players doing the same thing.”Property-catastrophe rates were up by around 10 percent to 15 percent at June 1 renewals, Mr Becker said. “We’re at an unusual time, where the market is clearly in a state of change,” said the CEO.“If you had asked what people thought rates would be back in January, they’d have said down five percent to 10 percent, so that’s a pretty big shift.”Rates for even non-property cat business are no longer declining, and tougher accounts and loss-impacted accounts are probably up five percent to 10 percent, Mr Becker added.The main drivers of the increases are frequency of severe catastrophe events, historically low interest rates and investment income, and the tailing off of any reserve redundancies that companies might have to release in respect to past years, he said.