Insurance Industry

Jurors at the criminal trial of Lynn B. Stites were offered starkly different portraits Monday of the former fugitive attorney, who was described by a federal prosecutor as the brains behind "the Alliance" insurance scheme, and by his defense lawyer as an innocent victim of an insurance industry vendetta. Stites, 48, who practiced law in Woodland Hills and West Los Angeles, faces 36 counts of mail fraud and a racketeering charge in a trial expected to last three months.

Devastated by losses from the Northridge earthquake, 20th Century Insurance Co. was on such shaky financial ground this summer that the company raised rates 17%, borrowed money and stopped selling some forms of insurance in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. But even as it was pleading poverty, the Woodland Hills-based company scraped together $5,000 to give to the campaign of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who is running for reelection against state Treasurer Kathleen Brown.

Primerica Corp. said Wednesday that it is negotiating to acquire The Travelers Corp. in a stock deal valued at more than $5 billion, creating one of the biggest financial services companies in the United States. Primerica, which mushroomed with its recent $1.1-billion acquisition of the Shearson Lehman Bros. retail brokerage operation, would be renamed The Travelers. Primerica already owns 27% of the Hartford, Conn.-based insurance and financial services company.

Insurance officials said the Los Angeles riots will be the costliest civil disturbances in U.S. history in terms of insurance losses, which some said may approach $1 billion. Adjusters were on the streets in riot-torn areas on Monday, in some cases writing checks on the spot to business owners. Adjusters were still having problems contacting customers on Monday; as a result, most insurers said it will be several days more before they knew the extent of their losses.

Insurance industry representatives and gay rights advocates clashed Tuesday in a debate before state insurance commissioners from around the nation on whether life and health insurers should be allowed to test individual applicants for the presence of AIDS antibodies.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to raise $1 billion by selling part of the state's scandal-plagued workers' compensation insurance company is running into strong flak from small-business advocates, the insurance industry and the state's elected insurance commissioner. The governor wants to help reduce a $24-billion budget deficit by giving private insurers a chance to buy about half of customers' policies at the government-controlled State Compensation Insurance Fund.

If there is one thing in the proposed congressional healthcare overhaul that sets Michael Cannon's libertarian teeth on edge, it's the requirement that all Americans get health insurance. "The federal government does not have the power to force you to purchase a private product," said Cannon, a health policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington. But with Congress poised to do just that, the mandate for near-universal coverage is generating opposition not only from libertarians like Cannon, who object to the guiding hand of government regulation in almost any form, but from some liberals -- and even from some members of the insurance industry, which stands to gain millions of customers.

Rising insolvencies. Tens of billions in high-risk investments. Lax regulators. Sound familiar? No, it's not the savings-and-loan industry or commercial banks, but their brethren in insurance who are now experiencing distress. With recession fears increasing, the speculative excesses of the 1980s are also haunting the insurance industry.

Shaken by the Orange County bankruptcy filing, bond investors are shopping for safety. "They're scared to death," said James Gammon, president of Lebenthal Asset Management in New York, which manages municipal bond portfolios for wealthy individuals, mainly in the Northeast. Experts expect investors to focus on cutting risk instead of maximizing yields, which could be good news for the bond insurance industry.

The newspaper advertisement was designed to pull the heart strings, and to generate public outrage over back-room deal-making in Washington. On one side of the page, a group of lobbyists and politicians were shown huddling. On the other side, a group of small children, with sad and plaintive expressions, stared silently into the camera. Under the picture of the lobbyists, the ad said: "They get a $1.2-billion tax loophole."