Lincoln Financial Group signs agreement to acquire Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston

Jan. 20--Business Wire reported Friday that Lincoln Financial Group announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Liberty Life Assurance Co. of Boston from Liberty Mutual Insurance Group.

Liberty Mutual Insurance has an office in Keene.

Lincoln Financial will retain Liberty's Group Benefits business and reinsure Liberty's Individual Life and Annuity business to Protective Life Insurance Company, when the transaction is finalized, according to the report.

The acquisition is expected to create a single, powerful Group Benefits operation, it said, noting that the deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2018, pending regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

In December, Liberty Mutual did not state publicly whether a new round of job cuts in New Hampshire would affect the Keene branch.

John Cusolito, a spokesman for the company, wrote in response to an email inquiry from The Sentinel that Liberty Mutual is "committed to communicating to our employees first about the changes taking place" before releasing that information to the public.

An earlier round of cuts eliminated about 360 technology jobs in New Hampshire and Massachusetts; eight of those jobs were in the Keene branch, Cusolito told The Sentinel at the time.

The job eliminations are part of an ongoing shift in the company's information-technology operations, he said at the time.

Liberty Mutual Insurance employs about 5,000 people in New Hampshire -- 2,600 of them in information technology -- and more than 50,000 people worldwide, according to Cusolito. The company had $38.3 billion in revenue in 2016.

Liberty Mutual is the city of Dover's largest employer. According to state Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, Liberty Mutual informed Watters and city officials that the acquisition isn't expected to result in sweeping layoffs, Foster's Daily Democrat reported Friday. Watters said he was informed there are roughly 1,000 Dover employees within the Liberty Life Assurance Company and that he was told Liberty Mutual's "feeling is that Lincoln (Financial) is buying the people, not just the business."

With the newly announced acquisition, Lincoln Financial is poised to become a Group Benefits market leader, as the combined Fully Insured Disability sales market share would be ranked No. 1 at 14 percent, and the combined Total Life and Fully Insured Disability sales market share rank would be No. 3, according to the report.

Under the terms of the agreement, Business Wire reported, Lincoln Financial Group will pay Liberty Mutual approximately $3.3 billion, which consists of $1.446 billion total net investment for the Group Benefits business, including a purchase price of $1.021 billion and $425 million in required capital.

The remaining components of the payment to Liberty Mutual include $410 million of individual life and annuity value paid by Protective Life; $1.202 billion associated with excess capital in LLAC; and $211 million of tax items, the report noted.

The acquisition will be financed with cash and the issuance of debt, Business Wire reported.

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