Managers of Brighthouse Financial received six formal offers from suitors interested in buying 100% of the company, as well as four offers to buy big parts of the company.
The six suitors that wanted all of Brighthouse made offers ranging from $2.7 billion to $4.6 billion.
Aquarian Capital — a New York-based private equity firm that made the second-highest offer, for $4.1 billion, or $70 per share — ended up getting Brighthouse because the suitor that made the $4.6 billion offer had trouble closing on a reinsurance arrangement it needed to complete the deal.
Brighthouse is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based company that holds the individual life insurance and annuity operations of MetLife.
The Brighthouse board talks about the new effort to take the company private, by selling it to investors, in a proxy statement filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
What it means: Financial advisors who want to know what life insurance and annuity issuers are thinking when they make big, strategic deals might find the new Brighthouse deal proxy filing interesting.
The history: MetLife put the individual life and annuity operations — which were the heart of a company that protected millions of Americans against premature death and unexpected longevity, helped the United States fight tuberculosis, and financed much of the rise of the modern U.S. economy — in a separate, publicly traded company in 2017 partly because of concerns about federal government efforts to designate it as a company that "was too big to fail" and partly because of a desire to focus on selling products that used less capital.
Brighthouse is one of the biggest annuity issuers in the United States and it now has a popular line of registered index-linked annuities.
But securities analysts had argued that investors appeared to be undervaluing Brighthouse, partly because of concerns about possible capital constraints.
The board began talking about strategic alternatives in 2024, and it began soliciting offers in January 2025, according to the proxy filing.
About 16 of the 20 "potential counterparties" contacted by investment bankers were interested enough to sign confidentiality agreements.
On Jan. 27, 2025, before news of the solicitation leaked, Brighthouse shares were selling for about $51.
Other deals: The proxy filing also includes a review of other deals for life and annuity issuers, such as Brookfield Re's July 2023 offer for American Equity Investment Life, which had a price equal to 89% of America Equity's book value, excluding accumulated other comprehensive income, and MassMutual's January 2021 offer for Great American Life, which had a price equal to 122% of Great American Life's book value, excluding AOCI.
Goldman Sachs, part of the team helping the Brighthouse board with the Aquarian deal, found that the Aquarian price is equal to about 25% to 45% of Brighthouse's projected $8.2 billion book value, excluding AOCI, based on an analysis involving cashflow projections.
Wells Fargo, which is also helping the Brighthouse board, found that Brighthouse should be worth about $42 to $77 per share, based on comparisons with Corebridge Financial, Jackson Financial and Lincoln National.
Credit: Daniel Williams/Touchpoint Markets
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