Churchill Insurance up for sale at £1.5bn
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Your support makes all the difference.Churchill, the nodding dog, is looking for a new home, after his owners decided they needed to raise some cash.
Analysts believe that Churchill Insurance, fronted by the cheerful bulldog, is expected to fetch £1.5bn for Credit Suisse, the Swiss financial giant.
The sale of the business, one of the five biggest insurers in the UK, would help bolster Credit Suisse's stretched balance sheet, after a year in which it reported a record loss of 3.3bn Swiss francs (£1.5bn). Churchill made a pre-tax profit last year of £83m in 2002.
Churchill was the brainchild of Martin Long, still chairman and chief executive, who set up the company in 1989 with the backing of Winterthur, now part of Credit Suisse.
It has more than 8,000 employees and insures 7 million cars. Potential buyers could include Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns Direct Line, and Lloyds TSB.
Credit Suisse has been beset by problems stemming from the decline in global stock markets, with lucrative work on flotations and mergers and acquisitions proving hard to come by, and the prospect of having to pay compensation for compromised investment research during the bull market.
In October, it was forced to pump an extra £860m into Winterthur, the insurance arm of which Churchill is a part and which combines Credit Suisse's UK life, general and reinsurance businesses. It is currently undergoing a restructuring with the loss of 350 jobs.
Credit Suisse refused to comment on speculation it has set bankers on the task of finding a buyer for Churchill. Analysts have long assumed that Winterthur will be sold, either whole or piecemeal, when its finances have been stabilised.
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