Deutsche Bank Said Near U.K. Insurance Unit Sale to Phoenix

(Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Bank AG is close to selling its U.K. insurance business, Abbey Life Assurance Co., after Phoenix Group Holdings emerged as the lead bidder, according to people with knowledge of the plans.

The Jersey-based consolidator of closed-life insurance businesses is planning to raise about 800 million pounds ($1.1 billion) to help fund the purchase, said one of the people, who declined to be named because the deliberations are private. The companies are set to finalize the deal within the next couple of weeks, the people said. Officials for Deutsche Bank and Phoenix declined to comment.

Phoenix Chief Executive Officer Clive Bannister, who joined in 2011 to cut costs and tackle a 2.7 billion-pound debt burden, has said that he’d be interested in buying Abbey Life if the unit was put up for sale. The CEO earlier this year completed the purchase of Axa SA’s U.K. pension and protection business for 375 million pounds, partly funded through a share placement.

Deutsche Bank said earlier this year that it was reviewing options for Abbey Life, with CEO John Cryan under pressure to shore up earnings and bolster capital buffers at the German lender. Abbey Life is among several U.K. life assurance businesses that are being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority over its practices on exit fees.

--With assistance from Sarah Jones To contact the reporters on this story: Dinesh Nair in London at dnair5@bloomberg.net, Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Ruth David in London at rdavid9@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Neil Callanan at ncallanan@bloomberg.net, Aaron Kirchfeld at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net, Simone Meier