American Safety Insurance has bought Bluestone Agency and its Cayman insurance subsidiary, Bluestone Surety for cash, which focuses mainly on transactional commercial surety.
As per the financial data released by the underwriter, Bluestone wrote approximately $1.6m in premium, primarily composed of low limit transactional commercial surety premium, in 2011.
ASI's president and chief operating officer Joseph Scollo said the firm has added a talented team of professionals with significant experience in the surety market furthering its strategic objective of growing its surety product offerings.
"The acquisition significantly expands our footprint in the commercial surety space providing a good balance to our existing contract surety business," Scollo added.
David Pearlstein said, "The combination of Bluestone with ASI's existing surety capabilities will provide for a powerful product offering in the market. We believe the acquisition will open up additional distribution channels for us in the surety space allowing us to execute on growth opportunities we currently see in the marketplace."
FBR Capital Markets & Co and Locke Lord acted as financial advisor and outside legal counsel, respectively, to Bluestone pertaining to the deal.
American Safety Insurance provides reinsurance and alternative risk markets through its subsidiaries, American Safety Reinsurance, and American Safety Assurance.