Private Equity Firm to Acquire Talcott Resolution Life

Sixth Street has agreed to acquire Talcott Resolution Life Insurance Company — what's left of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.'s old life and annuity operations, Talcott Resolution announced Wednesday.

The price was not disclosed.

Richard Carbone, Talcott Resolution's chairman, described the deal with Sixth Street as a sale. The companies hope to close on the deal by June 30.

Sixth Street intends to keep Talcott Resolution's headquarters in Windsor, Connecticut, and to keep Pete Sannizzaro in place as Talcott Resolution's president and chief executive officer, according to Talcott Resolution.

The Companies

Sixth Street is a San Francisco-based investment firm that was once affiliated with TPG. It manages about $50 billion in investments. The list of companies in its investment portfolio includes Airbnb, Paycor, PayScale and PaySimple.

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. is a big, Hartford-based multi-line insurer that was generating billions of dollars in annuity sales each year in the early 2000s. The company had about $190 billion in assets in 2007, but it then suffered from the effects of the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

Hartford Financial formed Talcott Resolution to hold the operations that were hit hard by the Great Recession.

Talcott Resolution Life Insurance Company, the parent company in the family, was formerly known as Hartford Life Insurance Company. The other companies in the family are Talcott Resolution Life and Annuity Insurance Company, which was formerly known as Hartford Life and Annuity Insurance Company; Talcott Resolution International Life Reassurance Corp., which was formerly known as Hartford International Life Reassurance Corp.; and American Maturity Life Insurance Company.

Talcott Resolution now has about $88 billion in assets, 600,000 annuity contract holders, and about 300,000 insurance policyholders.

Hartford Financial Services sold parts of its old life and annuity operations, including its retirement plan business, its individual life business and its Japanese life business, to other life insurers from 2013 through 2015.

In 2018, Hartford Financial sold what was left of Talcott Resolution to an investor group that was led by Cornell Capital LLC.

Henry Cornell, a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman, formed Cornell Capital in 2013.

The current Talcott Resolution ownership group includes Cornell Capital, Atlas Merchant Capital LLC, TRB Advisors LP, Global Atlantic Financial Group, Pine Brook, J. Safra Group and Hartford Financial Services Group.

— Read Talcott Hires a J.P. Morgan Dealmaker: Personnel Matters, on ThinkAdvisor.

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.