Hambro Insurance Services (HIS) is understood to be up for sale again following its withdrawal from a take-over proposal last year. The insurance and financial services group, Fishers International, is understood to remain interested in the insurance division and its £84 million take-over proposal.

The proposal last year, was to merge Fishers and HIS through an offer by Fishers for the entire issued share capital in the form of cash and shares.

The offer valued the ordinary shares at 128.7p and the entire company at £84 million. At the close of business on Friday Hambro was trading at just 104p, making it unlikely that Mr Kevin Kenny, chief executive at Fishers, will be as generous this time. However, when talks initially stated Hambro's share price was trading at just 83p and had risen to only 95p when the talks were confirmed in August 1997.

The about face of the board at Hambro Insurance - 52 per cent owned by the ailing Hambro Bank - comes after Schroders were sent into Hambro to put together a strategy to turn around the bank that was only generating profits of £1 million on net assets of over £290 million.

Fishers recently announced strong results with pre-tax profit up 58 per cent to £3 million sterling in 1997.

The group also agreed to buy two of the Oriel group's insurance units in March this year. Fishers said then its intention was to grow its existing claims management business, both organically and through strategic acqusitions.

At the time of the breakdown of the previous take-over talks in September last year Mr Kenny strongly rejected claims made by Hambro managing director Mr Nicholas Page that it never formally made an offer or put the necessary finance in place to complete the deal.