Lightyear Capital and PSP Investments to Buy AIG Advisor Group
January 28, 2016 by Chelsea Emery
After a previous attempt, Lightyear Capital will buy the broker-dealer arm of AIG.
The insurer will sell AIG Advisor Group to the New York-based Lightyear and PSP, the Canadian pension investment manager, AIG said on Tuesday.
Terms of the deal were not released. AIG Advisor Group, which has roughly 5,000 advisors, ranked fifth on Financial Planning‘s latest FP50, with $1.3 billion in revenues.
Lightyear Chief Executive Donald Marron is making his second bid to purchase AIG. After an earlier deal fell through, he purchased four independent broker-dealers from ING to create Cetera Financial in 2010. He then sold the B-D network to RCS Capital, which is expected to file for bankrupcty this month.
Cetera, meanwhile, is being restructured with an injection of $150 million of capital from lenders in the hopes of becoming an independent firm. Most recently, Larry Roth resigned as CEO of troubled RCS, according to an SEC filing. He had been on the job for only two months.
The AIG transaction, which the company said is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016, is one of several steps it announced to cut expenses by about $1.6 billion over the next two years.
“The creation of more nimble, standalone business units that can grow within AIG or be spun out or sold allows us to do what is in our shareholders’ best interests,” said CEO Peter Hancock, in a release.
AIG also said it planned an IPO of as much as 19.9% of United Guaranty and said it will create nine business units, each with its own financial metrics. Charlie Shamieh will act as CEO of what it called its “legacy” portfolio, which will hold non-strategic assets.
“After careful consideration, AIG believes that a full breakup in the near term would detract from, not enhance, shareholder value,” said Douglas Steenland, AIG’s non-executive chairman, in a release.
