Marsh & McLennan buys UK insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson for €4.8bn

US-based Marsh & McLennan (MMC) is buying British insurance and reinsurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) for £4.3 billion (€4.8 billion), the latest takeover in a sector which has been hit by recent losses.

Shares in JLT, which reorganised earlier this year into three divisions and has been preparing for a so-called hard British exit from the European Union in March, leapt by 32.3 per cent, just shy of MMC’s cash offer of 1,915 pence per share.

Risk

MMC’s takeover of JLT, which implies an enterprise value of about £4.9 billion (€5.5 billion), boosts a risk and insurance business whose revenue rose 7 per cent to $7.63 billion (€6.54 billion) in 2017, or just over half of the company’s total sales.

MMC said the deal is expected to achieve synergies of about $250 million (€214 million) within three years of completion, adding that it expects to cut 2 to 5 per cent of the combined company’s jobs.

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The companies said investors representing 40.45 per cent of JLT’s stock, including top shareholder Jardine Matheson Group, had already undertaken to support the tie-up.

– Reuters