Finance History | Nasdaq MarketSite — Twenty Dollars a Share Before a Bermuda Recapitalization

People treat Arch as a Bermuda specialty writer that replaced Twitter in the S and P 500.

The ticker is older than the island holding company.

Risk Capital Holdings, Inc. was formed in Delaware in March 1995.

In September 1995 it sold 16,750,625 common shares at 20 dollars each, plus warrants, and recorded about 335 million dollars of net proceeds in 1995 currency.

It contributed 328 million of that cash to Risk Capital Reinsurance Company, a Nebraska reinsurer built to write capital for other insurers.

On 5 May 2000 the parent sold that reinsurance book to Folksamerica Reinsurance Company. On 8 May 2000 it took the name Arch Capital Group Ltd.

On 8 November 2000 shareholders folded the Delaware company under a new Bermuda parent that kept the name and the Nasdaq symbol ACGL.

The mechanism that made the present firm is the hard market that followed.

After the World Trade Center attacks, Arch closed 763 million dollars of private equity in 2001 currency, led by Warburg Pincus at 405 million and Hellman and Friedman at 225 million, with the balance from funds tied to GE, Trident II, and Farallon Capital.

Insurance Journal recorded the close on 21 November 2001.

Management said the two pieces now in place were the underwriting team and a 1 billion dollar capital base.

A further 179.2 million dollars came from an April 2002 common-share offering.

The pin is the Times Square board where ACGL still prints. Waterloo House on Pitts Bay Road in Pembroke is the public Bermuda address.

Photo: ajay_suresh, 20 September 2021, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Nasdaq MarketSite, Times Square.