Lloyd's has sold liability insurance to corporate directors
These days, investors are more likely than they ever were to sue if, for example, a merger or a demerger goes wrong and a company's share price suffers as a consequence, Lloyd's marketing director Caroline Wagstaff told BBC News Online.
"Directors and officers have a responsibility to their shareholders to manage the share price prudently," Ms Wagstaff said.
Investors are "increasingly litigious" and will be quick to accuse the directors of negligence if the value of their portfolios slip, she said.
Liability insurance
Company directors and officers often take out liability insurance with Lloyd's agencies or other insurance companies to protect themselves against such suits.
Given that "there's an increasing number of claims being filed in court", the Lloyd's agencies have been forced to prepare for the possibility that court cases could follow, and that they could be lost, Ms Wagstaff explained.
In March, Lloyd's set aside funds to pay for insurance claims arising from the "subsequent reappraisals of the value" of corporate mergers and acquisitions activity, the insurance market said in a statement at the time.
The provisions were set aside to pay for a "rise in claims under Directors & Officers [liability] cover", the insurance market said in the statement.
"Some of [these claims] may prove to be spurious but nevertheless need to be reserved for," Lloyd's said in the statement.
Lloyd's of London has no information about how much money its underwriters have set aside, Ms Wagstaff said.
Assessing the risk of a claim being successful is a matter for each underwriting agency, she said.
Blame
Many investors saw the value of their share holdings in "new economy" companies begin to slide in April 2000, with some groups losing up to 90% of their value.
Some disgruntled investors have already sued regulators or financial analysts, trying to pass on the blame for their disastrous investments in dot.com companies.
In Italy, investors who had bought shares in a holiday company recently threatened the stock exchange watchdog with court action for its alleged failure to scrutinise companies' statements ahead of their stock market launch.
In the UK, the entertainment website e-district.net recently called in the Fraud Squad after an investigation commissioned by the company's board found what it says is evidence of false revenue claims designed to create the impression that the company was making money.
While in the US, several analysts who work for investment banks have been sued by investors who believe their advice to buy dot.com shares was formulated to please their dot.com clients.
Dot.coms
Ms Wagstaff does not see the dot.com industry as posing a great risk to the Lloyd's underwriters.
"You have to remember, many of those companies were quite small," she said.
"They may not have taken out such insurance."
And even if they had, it would be more difficult to prove that a director's negligence caused a dot.com's share price to fall, given the sector's volatility.