An information memorandum for ANZ Banking Group's wealth unit may be five weeks away, but suitors are well and truly gearing up for the auction.
Street Talk can reveal Zurich Insurance Group is in late stage talks with Credit Suisse to assist in its tilt at ANZ Wealth, while Deutsche Bank is in pole position to advise pan-Asian life insurer AIA Group.
AMP's long standing adviser UBS is on hand to help the company examine the ANZ assets, as flagged by this column. Other investment banks are fiercely pitching for buy-side roles hoping to line up with strong contenders. Other potential buyers include Japanese companies; Dai-Ichi Life, which owns TAL, the largest life insurer in Australia; MS&AD; Insurance Group; and Meiji Yasuda Life. US player MetLife will also run a ruler over the assets.
Swiss insurance giant Zurich proved its acquisitive mettle in Australia last year after buying Macquarie Life and in December lobbing a $741 million offer for ASX listed travel insurer Cover-More.
Goldman Sachs is running the auction on behalf of ANZ, which has already announced the divestments of UDC Finance and its 20 per cent stake in Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank this year. Many of those waiting for the ANZ Wealth auction to kick off want the bank to be open to selling the life insurance and funds management parts of the business separately.
ANZ chief Shayne Elliott has previously said that a piecemeal sale of the individual parts would be "complicated but not impossible".
The biggest division in the ANZ wealth business is life insurance, which has $1.6 billion of in-force premiums, representing a 13 per cent share of the individual market; the funds management division has $48 billion of assets under management.
