The report of my absence is premature - I will be in our South American 
offices Mon. - Thurs. of next week but am in the office in Houston all of 
this week.

I am also not aware of any memoranda on point.  I have seen the issue 
addressed in an off-hand way in one or more articles (not really legal 
analysis) and will keep my eyes open for those.  The bottom line is usually 
that insurance requires an actual loss and proof of that loss before a claim 
can be made on the insurance while in the case of the derivative, no loss 
needs to be shown, only the actual weather conditions described in the 
agreement.

Mark
---------------------- Forwarded by Mark - ECT Legal Taylor/HOU/ECT on 
03/09/99 01:58 PM ---------------------------


Shari Stack
03/09/99 11:57 AM
To: Paul Simons/LON/ECT@ECT
cc: Nick Mooney/LON/ECT@ECT, Lynda Clemmons/HOU/ECT@ECT, Mark - ECT Legal 
Taylor/HOU/ECT@ECT 
Subject: Re: Weather  

I am not aware of any ECT commissioned memo addressing why OTC Weather 
Transactions are not considered contracts for insurance. Mark may know 
something I don't but FYI- he is out of the office on business for the next 2 
weeks.

We do have a memo from Cadwalader which discusses whether a weather contract 
can be considered a "commodity" within the meaning of the U.S. Commodities 
Exchange Act. I will fax that over to you now for info.

Kind regards, 

Shari