Amsterdam: The Dutch government plans to float ASR, a former insurance arm of the Belgian financial group Fortis, next year rather than try to find a buyer for the business.
ASR, a life and property insurer, reported a book value of 3.37 billion euros ($3.6bn) at the end of the first half of 2015.
The announcement comes a week after the privatisation of bank ABN Amro on November 20 as the Dutch state seeks to unwind a series of emergency nationalisations undertaken during the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.
The state had always maintained the nationalisations were a temporary measure and the financial companies would be returned to private hands as soon as they were ready and market conditions allowed.
Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in a letter to parliament yesterday that the Netherlands Financial Investments (NLFI) agency had advised him ASR would not fetch any premium in a direct sale to a buyer and that an initial public offering (IPO) would be a better choice.
“I intend therefore to ask ASR and NLFI to start preparations for that, so that a stock market introduction in the first half of 2016 is possible,” Dijsselbloem wrote.
Separately the NLFI issued a statement saying it has advised the government to sell a stake of 30 to 50 per cent of ASR and that it had begun vetting investment banks to assist in the listing. It said it would use experience it gained from the ABN listing and
follow a similar procedure.
Chief executive Jos Baeten said in a reaction he agreed with the decision and the company is “ready to return to private hands”.
ASR was nationalised together with the distressed Dutch operations of Fortis and ABN Amro in 2008. In August it reported a net profit of 397 million euros for the first half of 2015, compared with 71m euros in the same period a year earlier, mostly due to gains on investments.
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