LONDON: U.K. insurance company Prudential has replaced one of its brokers, JPMorgan Cazenove, with Goldman Sachs. It has, however, retained UBS, the company said Thursday.
A spokesperson for the firm said it wanted to review its existing arrangements with broking firms and most of the major investment banks were invited to make presentations. He said JPMorgan Cazenove declined to participate in the exercise.
Sources close to the insurer said the firm was intending to make a change after the new chief executive, Mark Tucker, took charge. They said JPMorgan Cazenove had decided to step aside as its term of engagement with the insurer had ended and it wanted to leave the field for other players.
JP Morgan Cazenove, along with Goldman Sachs and UBS, managed Prudential's 1-billion-pound rights offer in November 2004. JPMorgan has also been one of the largest lenders of the insurer.
The investment banker, by far the largest corporate broker in the country, has some 36 FTSE 100 companies as its broking clients now. At one time, it peaked 40. It had lost HBOS, drink maker Diageo and Marks and Spencer, while it acquired a new client recently, Kazakhstan mining company Kazakhmys.
Goldman Sachs has as its noted FTSE 100 clients Vodafone , HSBC , Royal Bank of Scotland , Diageo and AstraZeneca .
Some analysts perceive Prudential's move to engage Goldman Sachs as a step to improve its defences against predators. There have been talks about a possible Prudential-Aviva merger.
Posted
on : Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:05 GMT | Insurance News
By : Salim Patel
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