Fosun invests heavily in global insurance market

Fosun International's purchase of Portugal's largest insurer for 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion) showed grand ambition from China's largest private conglomerate, an analyst said on Sunday.

"The deal shows Fosun's ambition," Chen Hewu, a consultant at Adfaith Management Consulting, told the Global Times Sunday.

The Shanghai-based, Hong Kong-listed group won a bid for the proposed acquisition of an 80 percent stake in Portugal Caixa Seguros e Saúde, SGPS SA, an insurance group owned by Portugal state bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos, SA, Fosun said in a statement filed with Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday.

Portugal's largest insurance group, Caixa Seguros owns 26 percent the country's insurance market.

This sale should help Caixa Geral de Depositos repay 1.65 billion euros in government funding, Reuters reported on Friday.

In 2011, Fosun set up a Shanghai-based 50-50 life insurance joint venture with the US Prudential Financial Inc. The firm also conducted a raft of overseas mergers and acquisitions in 2013, which included buying a 35 percent share in Italian menswear brand Caruso and the $725 million acquisition of the One Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York from JPMorgan Chase. Fosun already holds stakes in French resort company Club Med and Greek fashion brand Folli Follie, and controls shares in Alma Lasers, an Israeli beauty treatment equipment producer.