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Billionaire activist Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Investors Limited plans to acquire a reinsurance company, in a move that would lead to the creation of a new London-listed insurer for the first time since 2020.
London-listed TPIL said on Wednesday that it would acquire Malibu Life Reinsurance, a Cayman Islands-based life and annuity reinsurer that Loeb’s New York-based hedge fund Third Point launched last year. The Guernsey-based closed-end fund plans to acquire Malibu in an all-share deal that values Malibu at about $68mn.
If the deal is approved by shareholders, TPIL said it would acquire Malibu Life Re from another Loeb vehicle in exchange for the issue of new shares, in what amounted to a reverse takeover.
But the stock-for-stock deal has already been hit by opposition from Asset Value Investors Limited, which has a 7 per cent stake in TPIL and which said it planned to vote against the proposal.
AVI, a specialist investor in closed-end funds, said in a statement that the planned transaction “cemented” Third Point Investors’ status as “the poster child for appalling corporate governance”.
Third Point declined to comment on the statement from AVI.
The UK insurance market has not been immune to the broader dwindling of listings on London’s stock market. The takeover would create the first new London-listed insurer created since Bermuda-based reinsurer Conduit Re’s initial public offering in late 2020.
Rupert Dorey, chair of TPIL, said in a statement that Malibu Life was “a high-potential reinsurance platform with a robust pipeline of reinsurance and other origination opportunities that will enable it to achieve scale in the near-term”.
Saba Capital Management, which had an approximately 1 per cent stake in TPIL, according to TPIL’s Wednesday stock exchange filing, said it planned to support the transaction.
Saba founder Boaz Weinstein said in a statement: “We’re pleased to see a board of directors responding to the inherent challenges within the UK investment trust market.”