Allianz SE, AXA SA and Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings Inc made final bids for the rights to distribute their general insurance products through CIMB Group Holdings Bhd’s branches across Asia, people with knowledge of the matter said.
CIMB could fetch about US$200 million from the deal, according to the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private.
The so-called bancassurance agreement would allow an insurer to distribute products through CIMB outlets for more than 10 years, two of the people said.
Malaysia’s second-largest lender by assets has been cutting jobs to reduce costs amid a downturn in the regional business.
An agreement would follow the US$4.4 billion of insurance acquisitions in Malaysia over the past five years, including AIA Group Ltd’s US$1.7 billion purchase of ING Groep NV’s local business in 2012, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Manulife Financial Corp, Canada’s largest life insurer, said in August last year it is to pay S$1.6 billion (US$1.1 billion) to DBS Group Holdings Ltd to sell its insurance products in Asia for 15 years.
AIA Group Ltd agreed in 2013 to distribute its products through Citigroup Inc branches in 11 territories from Hong Kong to Australia for 15 years.
CIMB has more than 1,000 retail branches in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia, according to its Web site.
AXA, France’s largest insurer, has been selling assets in some developed markets and investing in faster-growing nations from China to Nigeria.
Sompo, Japan’s third-largest general insurer, partners with Berjaya Group Bhd to offer general insurance in Malaysia through 22 offices, its Web site shows.
Munich-based Allianz signed a 10-year bancassurance agreement with CIMB in 2007, the year its local unit relisted on the Malaysian stock exchange.
Europe’s biggest insurer by market value said in November last year it aims to generate an additional 6.5 billion euros (US$7.2 billion) in annual premiums and wants to achieve annual earnings per share growth of 5 percent on average from this year to 2018.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the