The week's winners
Royal & SunAlliance up 13.5%
Amlin up 11.6%
SVB up 10.2%
The week's losers
Windsor down 5.1%
Jardine Lloyd Thompson down 2.5%
You have to sympathise with Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) shareholders.
After two years' dismal declines in the stock, they vented their collective spleen at last week's annual meeting.
Chairman John Napier tried to deflect their anger against previous management, but a furious 35% rejected or abstained from supporting the company's executive pay awards.
The ire wasn't limited to ex-chief Bob Mendelsohn's £2.5m package for nine months' work after a string of missed targets.
His replacement, Andy Haste, is on a basic salary of £600,000 with options on shares worth five times that amount - a source of yet more criticism as they can be exercised if R&SA achieves a return on capital of just 6% above inflation over three years.
The fact that finance director Julian Hance will get £250,000 if he stays in his job until the end of the year caused yet more anger.
It was enough to bring out the pessimist in anyone, although UBS Warburg has just resumed its coverage of the group, raising the stock to a buy ahead of its interim results this week.
A glance at R&SA's beta - its risk relative to the risk of the equity market generally - gives it the appearance of being a good bet. Research by Commerzbank gave it a beta of 2.1.
This simply means the share is likely to fall faster than a generally falling market or rise faster than a generally rising market.
That score alone could suggest investors' concerns are overplayed and the sector's beta, at 1.75, is significantly higher than its historical range of 0.8 to 1.3.
But it is not enough on its own to tempt Commerzbank to up R&SA from an 'accumulate'. The tips went instead to R&SA's competitors Aviva, Allianz Cornhill, Zurich and others.
Elsewhere, Brit's takeover of PRI was approved at EGM, lifting the stock about 2p. It opened at 73p on Tuesday.
