(Bloomberg) – Swiss Re AG's chief said the reinsurer would welcome an anchor investor after being approached by billionaire Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group Corp.
In a business where results can change radically from one year to the next, “it's not a bad thing to have an anchor shareholder,” Christian Mumenthaler said at a conference in Zurich. he said. “If you ask me, just high level, is it attractive? I would say yes.”
|Preliminary discussions
SoftBank wants to buy as much as a third of Swiss Re, according to people with knowledge of the matter. While the reinsurer has confirmed what the CEO called “very preliminary” discussions with the investor — Swiss Re hadn't said any more about what it thinks of the offer.
Son is reshaping Japanese mobile-phone carrier SoftBank into a technology investor, a move that could see Son follow business titans including Warren Buffett who have buttressed their conglomerates with healthy cash flows from reinsurance. SoftBank has raised $93 billion out of a planned $100 billion for its Vision Fund, the world's biggest private equity pool, and has taken stakes in businesses including ride-hailing, chipmaking, office-sharing, satellite-building, robot-making and even indoor kale-farming.
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