Insurance broker April is preparing to switch to the American flag.
The KKR investment fund has entered into exclusive negotiations with a view to buying the Lyon group from the CVC Capital Partners fund.
The amount of the transaction was not revealed, but it would amount to 2.3 billion euros, according to
L'Argus de l'assurance
.
A price 2.5 times higher than that paid by CVC only three years ago (900 million euros).
This is the largest transaction of the year in the French private equity sector, where financing is very difficult to find.
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For KKR, which was in competition with the PAI and Cinven funds, this is a form of revenge: the American investment company was already in the final with CVC at the end of 2018 for the takeover of April.
Refocused
Its arrival as a “long-term” majority shareholder should support the transformation carried out in recent years by April, which has a network of 15,000 partner brokers.
Under the management of Éric Maumy, the brokerage firm has refocused on its flagship activities (health, provident insurance, borrower insurance and the VSE-SME segment).
It achieved nearly 544 million euros in turnover in 2021 and claims
“double-digit growth momentum”
in 2022.
The tricolor company which operates in seventeen countries, including Germany, where it opened a branch in mid-November, considers that by changing shareholders it
"gives itself the means to become a player on a global scale"
and welcomes
“a wonderful collaboration with CVC Capital Partners”.
