MetLife To Keep RGA Stake

By Steve Tuckey

April 22, 2005 at 08:00 PM

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MetLife Inc. says it is no longer considering the sale of its 51% stake in Reinsurance Group of America Inc., St. Louis, to help finance its acquisition of Travelers Life & Annuity.[@@]

When executives at MetLife, New York, announced the Travelers deal earlier this year, they were somewhat vague about how they would raise the $11.5 billion needed to complete the deal for the Hartford-based Citigroup Inc. unit.

In March, MetLife announced it had raised $2.6 billion in cash and generated $1.2 billion in after-tax gains by selling 2 large Manhattan properties.

Selling MetLife's 51% RGA stake would have brought in about $1.5 billion in pre-tax gains, and those proceeds could have reduced the amount of convertible debt that MetLife will have to issue to pay for the Travelers deal, according to Suneet Kamath, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company L.L.C., New York.

"There is still uncertainty over the amount of stock they [MetLife] will need to issue to Citigroup, and the amount of convertible debt they will raise," Kamath says. "The latter has implications for earnings-per-share and return-on-equity dilution."

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