New investor to become biggest shareholder of Hastings
South African investment firm Rand Merchant Investment Holdings (RMI) has agreed to buy a 29.9% stake in insurance group Hastings from its main shareholder Hastings Investco.
RMI will pay between £487.3 million and approximately £499.5 million for the stake – equating to between 248p and 255p a share, depending on the closing date of the transaction.
The deal will make RMI Hastings’s biggest shareholder. Following the deal, the founding shareholders will own 13.2% of the company and Goldman Sachs 22.6%.
The transaction may be completed in up to three stages, with each stage being linked to receiving regulatory approvals from the Financial Surveillance Department of the South African Reserve Bank, the UK Financial Conduct Authority and/or the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission, respectively.
The deal is expected to close on or before 2 May 2017.
Hastings chief executive Gary Hoffman (pictured) said: “We welcome RMI as shareholders of Hastings and look forward to working with Herman Bosman as we continue to execute on our attractive growth strategy. RMI has a number of investments in insurance businesses in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
”Given this experience, Hastings will look to explore potential areas of cooperation with RMI and OUTsurance in the future that would accelerate execution of our existing strategy including in the areas of home, data analytics, mobile propositions and operational efficiencies.”
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