NFP, a subsidiary of Aon, the international insurance broker, announced it has acquired the retail cannabis business of Frontier Risk Group, a specialty insurance company that has focused on the marijuana industry.
Frontier is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. Eric Scheider, senior vice president at Frontier, will join NFP with the same title and will report to Scott Foster, healthcare and life sciences practice leader for NFP, the company said in a news release.
“Frontier Risk’s cannabis business is a natural fit for our Life Sciences practice,” said Foster. “Their specialized expertise in the cannabis sector expands our ability to serve businesses operating in highly regulated industries.”
Following the sale, Frontier will focus on scaling its Strata Specialty, a multi-program manager for critical infrastructure and other specialized areas.
NFP has headquarters in New York. Aon’s North American operations are based out of Chicago.
A Broward County jury on Thursday exonerated the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm, finding the large New York firm’s lawyers were not negligent in the downfall of Patriot National, the Florida insurance services firm that went bankrupt a decade ago.
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It’s too early to say if Patriot National owner Steven Mariano will appeal the verdict, said Bill Scherer, co-counsel in the case.
“We’re looking at our options. I don’t have many cases that don’t end up in the appellate court, but we’ll see,” Scherer told Insurance Journal Friday morning. “We felt there was plenty of evidence to show that the firm had let him down, had let Mr. Mariano’s companies down, but the jury didn’t see it that way.”
Mariano is the high-profile Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur who also owned Guarantee Insurance Co., a workers’ compensation insurer that famously was declared insolvent in 2017. A few months later, Patriot National, whose main client was Guarantee Insurance, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, just a few years after Mariano had hired Simpson Thacher attorneys to help take the company public.
Mariano quickly blamed his lawyers and others for a botched initial public offering and private investment in public entity (PIPE) transaction that sent Patriot’s stock price to the floor. He filed a professional malpractice suit against the white-shoe Simpson Thacher law firm in 2017, alleging the lawyers failed to protect Patriot from predatory hedge fund investors.
After years of delays, on July 14 the suit finally went to trial, a rarity in legal malpractice claims, which often settle, Law360 reported. Simpson Thacher’s trial attorneys, with the Stearns Weaver Miller and the Williams & Connolly firms, told a different story at the three-week trial, arguing that Mariano was desperate for cash, was millions of dollars in debt, and was fully warned about the dangers of certain financial arrangements.