Brighthouse Financial Goes Public

MetLife continues to be a major player in the U.S. group life, employee benefits and asset-management markets, and it also has major insurance operations outside the United States.

MetLife turned Brighthouse into a separate company by giving shares of Brighthouse stock to its own shareholders through a special stock dividend.

MetLife carved out the Brighthouse operations partly because of concerns about Dodd-Frank Act rules that may subject “systemically important financial institutions” to extra layers of regulation, and partly because of concerns about the effects of prolonged low interest rates on interest-sensitive insurance products.

The Brighthouse separation may also reduce MetLife’s exposure to the effects of U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, and of other federal financial services product sales and marketing rules, on issuers of retail financial services products.

Kandarian suggested in an interview on CNBC that Brighthouse stock might be attractive to investors who want to place a bet on the possibility that interest rates will soon start to rise.

— Read Prudential to Realign Its U.S. Businesses on ThinkAdvisor.