Council Set Up to Help Ambac Rehab

Wisconsin insurance commissioner Sean Dilweg has formed a nine-person council of advisers to support his efforts to rehabilitate Ambac Assurance Corp.

The group will help him draft a plan to wind down the bond insurer’s outstanding policies.

Dilweg is expected to file the plan with the Wisconsin Circuit Court in Lafayette County later this year.

“The expert and experienced advice these advisers will provide with respect to the rehabilitation of the segregated account is crucial to our success,” he said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

Ambac Assurance is a junk-rated municipal bond insurer. It lost its gilt-edged ratings in 2008 after illiquid structured finance assets that it guaranteed exposed the company to near-fatal losses.

Dilweg is charged with overseeing the insurer, which is domiciled in Wisconsin.

Ambac Assurance has not written new policies since June 2008, but continues to maintain the market’s second-largest insured municipal bond portfolio, with nearly $219 billion par outstanding.

As of March 31, the company also guaranteed $160 billion of structured finance assets and international finance products, according to its first-quarter operating supplement.

Dilweg in late March ordered the insurer to deposit $67 billion of its more toxic holdings into a newly created account that his office now administers to facilitate an orderly runoff or settlement.

The new advisory team of consultants, lawyers and other professionals should prove “a valuable resource” in articulating those plans, said Dilweg, who was unavailable for additional comment.

The council is made up of Kimberly Shaul, deputy commissioner of insurance for Wisconsin and special deputy rehabilitator; Jeff Post, president and chief executive officer of Cuna Mutual Group; Steve Callahan, senior consultant and practice development director at Robert E. Nolan Co.; Walter Harris, president and chief executive officer of Tanenbaum-Harber Co.; Kenneth Gibbs, president of municipal securities at Jefferies Group; Thomas Gybel, a director at PNMAC Mortgage Opportunity Fund LLC and special adviser to Galileo Weather Risk Management Advisors LLC; Karl Case, a professor of economics at Wellesley College; Patricia Hopkins, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at Independent Community Bankers of America; Chris Evangel, managing director of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ securities valuation office; and David Walsh, counsel to the rehabilitator and a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, where he served the government and public policy practice.

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