After the storm

IT HAS not been a good decade for Lloyd's of London. The members of the three-century-old insurance market spent the early 1990s making huge losses on their underwriting portfolios, as claims for natural disasters, environmental damage and product-liability suits poured in. They then spent the mid-1990s fighting over who was going to pay for it all; the result last September was a massive, and contentious, reorganisation. Now, with its worst financial troubles behind it, Lloyd's must spend the rest of the decade tackling its toughest challenge yet: justifying its unique existence.