Liberty Reverses Offshore Strategy With Planned Sales

Stephen Harris

23 November 2005

South African life insurance firm Liberty Group is to reverse its offshore strategy with the planned sale of its Jersey hedge fund business Ermitage. "Liberty has indicated to the investment community that it does not, at this stage, wish to pursue an offshore strategy, but rather focus on its South African operations," the company said in a statement. The announcement of the sale of the offshore unit, which has not been a surprise, is likely to net more than R1.2 billion ($182 million) when it is added to the proposed sale of an Australian insurance company. Liberty has valued Ermitage at about R800 million on its books. At least R600 million of this is thought to relate to the hedge-fund arm of Ermitage’s business. According to Liberty there are already some offers on the table for Ermitage and they are hoping to conclude a deal by the year-end. Liberty Ermitage has more than $4 billion of assets under management, with around $1.73 billion of these in alternative investments. South Africa’s Standard Bank owns 30 per cent of Liberty and the two companies jointly own asset and wealth management firm Stanlib.