"Criminals who are successful in their usual endeavours are often undone by a foray into art theft," said Robert Korzinek, a fine art underwriter at the insurer Hiscox.
"People have been talking about this for some time," said Robert Read, fine art underwriter at Bermuda-based Hiscox, the world's second-biggest art insurer.
Armed with a degree in economics and law from Cambridge, he joined his father's firm, which had been founded in 1946, as an underwriter of fine art and personal accident insurance in 1965.
It is the art, and responsibility, of the underwriter to set a price that attracts buyers, yet gives the seller the fullest possible haul.Within days of the flotation on May 5th, the price of Lazard shares had fallen to $21. Despite a bounce, it has yet to achieve the level at which the shares were sold.
Mrs. Hannay, 27, is an underwriter specializing in fine art at AXA Art Insurance Corporation in New York.
"A lot of underwriters have felt that art insurance was a good business to be writing," Mr. Guerrini-Maraldi said, "because it's profitable, and because losses are rare – although when they do happen, they can be big.
Pew was advised by a coalition of underwriters and arts advocacy groups, including New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts and Time Warner.
Its provenance was uncovered by a Lloyd's underwriter who checked it against the database of missing art and found that it had indeed been stolen.
The problem, some dealers, collectors and art advisers say, is that the neutrality of an auction is lost when these underwriters can bid on a work they've guaranteed.
But insurance underwriters, fearing ruinous losses if the facility were hit by a fire or an art heist of the kind that struck Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum earlier this month, are raising the cost of insuring any more paintings under its roof, or even refusing cover altogether.
The best bond underwriter in the world would make little profit if the company had not also mastered the art of trading profitably in the bond markets; good equity traders are not much use unless they help a bank attract more share-underwriting and M&A business.
