Daily briefing: Monday - The great Groupama sale

It’s a sad time for Groupama. As the French insurer’s exposure to the Euro crisis has played out, the spotlight has inevitably swung to its UK insurance and broking arms, the sale of which is set to raise some extremely welcome capital if it goes ahead.

Although the insurer won’t comment, it understood to have privately raised the ‘for sale’ sign, with separate sales for its insurance arm and brokers (Carole Nash, Bollington, Lark) mooted.

There will be plenty of willing buyers – among them Advent, the private equity house that backs Towergate, which could additionally benefit from the guiding hand of Towergate founder Peter Cullum and former chief executive Andy Homer on the deal.

Groupama’s broking businesses have hitherto maintained their separate identity, and have not achieved any real synergies as a group. Thus they could be split apart relatively easily. So, for the sake of argument, Lark could go into Towergate, say, and Bollington and Carole Nash could perform MBOs.

The bigger issue lies with the insurance business. If it went to a private equity buyer, it would likely have the costs squeezed out of it. If it goes to a trade buyer, that will further limit choice for brokers.

Groupama UK has been a solid well-run business, providing a consistent, quality option for brokers. It has been caught up in the wider vortex of European troubles, rather than suffering through any kind of mismanagement or strategy failure.

It’s hard to see how its potential sale is anything but bad news for brokers.

All change for Swiss Re?

And so the reinsurance industry bids farewell to Swiss Re chief executive Stefan Lippe, who has announced his decision to take early retirement next year. He leaves the reinsurance behemoth in good shape.

Hitherto, Swiss Re has steered clear of the kind of forays into primary insurance made by its major competitor Munich Re. Under a new leader, could that change?