INSURER RSA is to sell its insurance business in Singapore and Hong Kong to Allied World Assurance for £130 million in cash.
The business where former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester is now leading a turnaround said the deal was expected to result in a gain of about £110m and would add about £95m to the company's tangible net assets.
RSA underwrites a mix of commercial and retail business in Singapore and Hong Kong. Allied World Assurance provides property, casualty and speciality insurance and reinsurance services.
RSA earlier this month posted an interim pre-tax profit of £69m, following a £494m loss in the second half of last year.
The London-headquartered insurer was hit by three profit warnings in the second half of 2013, and an accounting scandal in Ireland for which it is facing a big fine. That led to the departure of chief executive Stephen Lee , who was replaced in February by the former RBS chief.
Mr Hester has said the recovery is "ahead of our expectations" and thanked shareholders for their patience on the absence of a dividend in the first year of a three-year strategic plan.
Ratings agency Fitch said after the results that it believes "some uncertainty still remains about the size of further write-offs, reserve strengthening and the cost-reduction programme, despite the significant increase in the company's capital resources resulting from management actions".
RSA shares were up 0.2p to 437.70 yesterday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article