MMC

MMC (re)insurance business to be 40 percent bigger than rival Aon

By Peter Hastie

MMC’s $5.6bn acquisition of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT) will cement the group’s position as the industry’s largest global broker based on (re)insurance revenues and will also create a 40 percent top line differential based on 2017 results.Last year, MMC’s risk and insurance services division posted revenues of $7630mn vs Aon’s total (re)insurance revenues of $6378mn.

However, JLT’s risk and insurance division posted revenues of £1065.8mn in 2017, the equivalent of $1396mn at today’s exchange rate of £1:$1.31.

On pro-forma terms, this would make the combined group’s top line based on 2017 (re)insurance revenues as high as $9026mn; a significant milestone from Aon’s $6378mn, or 40 percent higher.

Earlier today, re-Insurance revealed that a combined Guy Carp-JLT Re will become the largest reinsurance intermediary, overtaking Aon’s reinsurance arm, Aon Reinsurance Solutions Business.

Aon’s reinsurance arm posted revenues of $1.43bn while a combined Guy Carp-JLT Re will have marginally higher revenues of $1.47bn based on 2017 reported numbers.

While there will inevitably be some fall-out from such a significant M&A, the gap will be the largest between the two firms for over thirty years when they both led a major consolidation drive in the 1990s (see table).

It is also the largest ever acquisition undertaken among (re)insurance intermediaries trumping the $2bn Marsh paid to acquire another UK broking heavyweight, Sedgewick, in 1998 and the $2.1bn that Willis paid in 2008 for US retailer Hilb, Rogal & Hobbs.

Marsh’s focus on building out its US mid-market business in recent years has seen the group regain its number one position after a few years of revenue pre-eminence by Aon followings its 2008 £844mn acquisition of reinsurance intermediary Benfield and also the particular privations endured by MMC at the hands of the near-obsessed former NY attorney-general Eliot Spitzer in 2004-05.

Below is a history of major broking M&A between US and UK broking firms. The big, once again, are set to get bigger.

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