By Rob Potter
ROCK HILL —February 02, 2001 - Frontier Insurance Group, Inc. will not fight an imminent delisting from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after all.
Earlier this week, Frontier withdrew its appeal of the NYSE’s intention to delist the Rock Hill-based company – an announcement which NYSE made earlier this week.
As of today, Frontier’s common stock is scheduled to be traded on the OTC (over-the-counter) Bulletin Board and will no longer be among the NYSE-traded stocks listed in newspapers.
The move down to the bulletin board is the latest in a series of negative events that have humbled the once-profitable insurance company. Dramatic financial losses have led to the rapid decrease in the value of Frontier stock and a series of layoffs over the past several months.
Frontier lost more than $230 million in 1999 and nearly $150 million in the nine-month period between January 2000 and September 2000. (Fourth-quarter earnings have yet to be released.) The losses were blamed on insufficient reserves for the policies Frontier paid out on, and the company has been undergoing an aggressive restructuring through a specialist hired specifically for that purpose.
In one of its final NYSE listings yesterday morning, Frontier stock closed at only 12 cents a share, down two cents from the opening of trading Thursday.