Guardian Life, the life assurance arm of the Guardian-PMPA group, is expected to fetch in excess of £50 million (€63.48 million) after formal bids to buy the company were submitted by yesterday's deadline.

While Guardian's share of the life assurance market is small, with less than 2 per cent, industry sources said that the consolidation of the market and the existence of at least five formal bids should ensure a premium price for the Irish business.

No spokesman for Guardian was available to comment on the number of bids received by yesterday's deadline, but industry sources believe that the most likely bidders are existing domestic assurers like Irish Life, Bank of Ireland-owned New Ireland, Ark Life and Friends First. Guardian Life's market share is too small to be attractive to any outside group that does not already have a presence in the Irish life market.

While small, Guardian Life has one special attraction in that it primarily offers with-profits life assurance policies. This would make it attractive to a specialist unit-linked life company that is keen to diversify into with-profits business without incurring the large start-up costs. Guardian Life is being sold off by the GRE-owned Guardian-PMPA following the takeover of GRE in the UK by the French group, Axa. Following the takeover, a policy decision was taken by Axa to retain the Irish non-life business - by far the biggest part of GRE's operations in Ireland - but to exit life assurance here. Investment bank DLJ Phoenix was appointed to handle the sale and formal bids had to be with DLJ by close of business yesterday.

At this stage, it is not clear whether this is the end of the bidding process or whether yesterday's bids will be reduced to a shortlist of two or three who will be invited to carry out a more detailed due diligence before making a final offer for Guardian Life.