Some of the largest insurance and financial services firms are making final arrangements to take part in what looks likely to be a competitive fight for the remaining wealth business of Australia's ANZ banking group. Who is in the running?
Australian publication «AFR» (paywall) reports that Zurich Insurance Group is in talks with Credit Suisse to assist in its pitch for ANZ Wealth, while Deutsche Bank is said to be advising the pan-Asian life insurer AIA Group.
U.S. firm Goldman Sachs is running the auction on behalf of ANZ.
Other Players
The report goes on to say that other potential buyers include Japan's Dai-Ichi Life, which owns TAL, the largest life insurer in Australia; MS&AD Insurance Group, Meiji Yasuda Life and UBS, AMP's long standing adviser is said to be looking at the ANZ assets.
Late last year ANZ and Singapore's DBS surprised markets when the Singaporean bank acquired ANZ’s wealth management and retail banking business in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Indonesia.
ANZ chief Shayne Elliott has previously said that a piecemeal sale of the individual parts would be «complicated but not impossible.»
The largest unit in the ANZ wealth business is life insurance, which has $1.6 billion of in-force premiums, which represents a 13 percent share of the individual market; the funds management division has $48 billion of assets under management.
