Slaughter and May and Freshfields are advising on Zurich Insurance Group’s £7.7bn bid for FTSE 100 insurer Beazley.
Slaughters is leading for Zurich on the latest bid, which comes after the Swiss insurance giant made an earlier offer of 1,230 pence per share on 4 January.
That was rejected by Beazley’s board as ‘significantly undervaluing’ the company. The latest proposal has been upped to 1,280 pence per share.
Slaughters is advising Zurich, with the firm’s corporate and M&A co-head Richard Smith and corporate and commercial partner Natalie Cook leading the firm’s team.
Smith is ranked as a leading partner in both the Legal 500 premium M&A and mid-large cap equity capital markets rankings.
On the other side, Freshfields is acting for Beazley, fielding a team including London corporate partners Meredith Bayley and Claire Wills, global M&A co-head Andrew Hutchings and insurance transactions partner Lauren Honeyben.
Slaughters has a history of working with Zurich. At the end of last year, the firm advised subsidiary company Zurich Assurance on a £6bn longevity swap with the BCC Pension Scheme and Metlife, which n 2018 a team acted for Zurich Insurance on the transfer of its pre-2007 UK legacy employers’ liability portfolio to Catalina Holdings.
Freshfields has also handled work for Zurich in the past, leading on the company’s $488m acquisition of a controlling stake in India’s Kotak General Insurance in 2023, as well as its aborted bid to take over RSA in 2015.
