Anbang eyes South Korean acquisition

Insurance giants snapping up foreign assets

China's Anbang Insurance Group Co has expressed interest in buying a controlling stake in South Korea's Tong Yang Life Insurance, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Experts said the move, if true, would not be surprising given Anbang's rapid expansion.

The Korea Economic Daily, a leading newspaper in South Korea, reported on Thursday that Anbang had inked a memorandum of understanding to buy a 57.5 percent stake in Tong Yang Life owned by South Korean private equity (PE) firm Vogo Investment for around 1.1 trillion won ($1.01 billion).

The newspaper did not name its sources.

Neither Vogo nor Anbang Insurance could be reached for comment by press time.

Established in 2005, Vogo is a leading PE firm in South Korea, with more than $2 billion in assets under management, according to the company's website.

Vogo first acquired its stake in Tong Yang Life in 2006, but decided to sell it in 2011, Reuters reported.

"More and more overseas mergers and acquisitions carried out by Chinese companies are involving PE firms. This pattern became clearer in 2014," Zhuo Zhicheng, a senior partner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Beijing, told the Global Times Thursday.

The process generally involves buying stakes in overseas companies that are owned by the PE firms, Zhuo said.

Beijing-based Anbang, which offers insurance and asset management services, was already in the media spotlight after Southern Weekly, a newspaper in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, publicly apologized on Monday for implying that powerful political connections had fueled its rapid growth.

"I would not be surprised if the news of Anbang's new equity investment is true," an industry insider who declined to be named told the Global Times on Thursday.

The acquisition would require regulatory approval in South Korea.

Anbang, one of China's largest insurers, was founded in 2004 by seven companies, including Shanghai Automotive Industry Group and Traveller Automobile Group.

The insurer has already made several large acquisitions, both in China and abroad, notably its $1.95 billion purchase of New York's famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel on October 6, 2014.

On October 13, 2014, Anbang also announced it had purchased a 100 percent stake in Fidea, a Belgium-based insurer.

Chinese insurers' appetite for overseas assets has been increasing since the sector was allowed to invest abroad in 2012.

By the end of 2014, outbound investment by domestic insurers totaled $24 billion, with about 20 percent going into property and most of the rest flowing into stocks and equities, Zhou Yanli, vice chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, said at a press briefing in Beijing on January 23, 2014.

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, China's second-largest insurer by market value, acquired Tower Place, an office building in London, on January 23 2015.

This followed its 260 million pound ($394.9 million) acquisition of the iconic Lloyd's Building in London's financial district in July 2013.

A group led by Ping An Insurance's major rival China Life Insurance Co bought an office building in Canary Wharf in London for 795 million pounds in June 2014.