Executives honored for contributions to solvent runoff

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Andrew Rothseid and Gary Lee were named co-winners of the Assn. of Insurance & Reinsurance Run-Off Cos.' 2011 Person of the Year award, for their contribution to the first accelerated closure of a solvent U.S. reinsurer under a Rhode Island law.

The two helped the still-solvent GTE Reinsurance Co. Ltd. legally liquidate its obligations in runoff under Rhode Island's Voluntary Restructuring of Solvent Insurers Act.

Mr. Rothseid is a principal of Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based RunOff Re.Solve L.L.C., which provides restructuring and advisory services. Mr. Lee is co-chair of New York-based law firm Morrison & Foerster L.L.P.'s bankruptcy and restructuring practice group, New York-based AIRROC said in a statement released Wednesday.

Mr. Rothseid designed, drafted and is responsible for implementing GTE's commutation plan, according a RunOff Re.Solve statement. Mr. Lee represented the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation's insurance division in defending challenges to the 2002 law, which is the only one of its kind in the United States, but borrowed language from the U.K. Companies Act.

When GTE tried to implement the commutation plan, units of Stamford, Conn.-based Odyssey Re Holdings Corp. objected to the valuation ascribed to their claims, sued and sought to have the law authorizing it declared unconstitutional. But Providence County Superior Court Judge Mark A. Silverstein approved it in May in the case In Re GTE Reinsurance Co. Ltd.