mosaic-m-a-team
William Monat, Stavan Desai, Katherine Spenner, Mosaic
14 July 2021News

Mosaic rides wave of M&A deals with transactional liability offering

Mosaic Insurance has begun underwriting transactional liability coverage in the US to take advantage of the upsurge in mergers and acquisitions activity.

Mosaic offers a lead market on M&A coverage and will deploy a maximum initial capacity of $25 million per risk, which it expects to increase over time to match demand. It plans to expand outside the US in due course.

Mosaic’s product line includes representations and warranties insurance (RWI), which is widely used by private equity and strategic buyers and sellers in M&A deals, including stock and asset purchases, mergers, restructurings and recapitalisations.

Mosaic is growing its M&A underwriting team in the US, based in New York under the leadership of William Monat, Mosaic’s global head of M&A, who joined the company in April. It currently has a team of seven M&A specialists and it plans to hire additional talent in the coming months.

Stavan Desai, senior vice president and M&A team leader, leads Mosaic’s underwriting team in North America. He was previously a senior M&A underwriter for AIG and served as a senior attorney at Schulte Roth & Zabel, where he concentrated on private equity, M&A, leveraged buyouts, and alternative asset management deals.

Katherine Spenner is senior vice president and chief legal officer for M&A, and leads product development and underwriting execution across the M&A insurance portfolio. She most recently served as chief underwriting officer for the transaction liability group at Everest Insurance, after nearly a decade representing public and private-equity M&A clients at White & Case and Torys.

Mitch Blaser, co-founder and co-chief executive officer at Mosaic, said transactional liability has always been a cornerstone of Mosaic’s specialty strategy. “Our leadership and M&A team are known for their deep expertise and a market-leading heritage in this field—and the timing couldn’t be better, with current appetites and opportunities for acquisitions on the rise,” he said.

Monat said: “The upswing in deal activity began late last year and continues to heat up, thanks to available capital, motivated buyers and sellers, and significant pent-up demand.”

Desai said the sector is on track for a record-setting year of private-equity and strategic deal activity in 2021. “We see immediate opportunity to provide tailored solutions for middle-market M&A transactions which can be lost in the shuffle of unprecedented deal volume in the US,” he said.