MetLife Strikes $1.2B Deal For PineBridge Investments
Insurance giant MetLife has reached a deal to buy PineBridge Investments from Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li’s Pacific Century Group.
The agreement is valued at $1.2B, Bloomberg reported. The deal is expected to close next year pending regulatory approvals.
“The acquisition of PineBridge Investments furthers our ambition to accelerate growth in asset management,” MetLife President and CEO Michel Khalaf said in a statement.
MetLife will acquire around $100B in assets via an $800M acquisition of PineBridge, according to a release. MetLife is expected to later pay out two $200M sums, including one based on achieving certain financial goals next year and another based on a multiyear earnout.
The acquisition does not include PineBridge’s private equity funds group or its China-based joint venture with securities brokerage Huatai Securities Co., which managed more than $70B at midyear 2024, Bloomberg reported.
MetLife Investment Management, the insurer’s institutional asset management arm, will have more than $700B in assets under management after the deal, according to the release.
MetLife will also acquire a collateralized loan obligation platform, a multi-asset business, a global suite of equity strategies, and direct lending and European real estate businesses as part of the transaction.
More than half the assets involved in the deal are outside of the U.S., and around a third are in Asia, meaning that the sale expands MetLife’s global footprint.
Pacific Century, meanwhile, kept its mainland China business and plans to focus on developing Huatai-PineBridge and private funds assets, a spokesperson for the holding company told Bloomberg.
PineBridge was founded in 1996 as the investment advisory and asset management business of insurer American International Group. Pacific Century Group acquired PineBridge for $500M in 2010.
