Life assurance firm, Just Retirement (Holdings) Plc, has been put up for sale by its majority shareholder, Langholm. The company, which specialises in providing pensions to obese smokers and products which allow the elderly to release equity out of their homes, may have a selling price of £300m; double its quoted market value.
Surrey-based Just Retirement has hired Deutsche Bank to manage the sale. Interested bidders are thought to include Cinven, a private equity group. According to reports, the group bought Partnership Assurance, a similar business for £160m last year.
Langholm, the venture-capital group which owns 52%, is thought to have brought in Fenchurch to advise them.
There has been speculation that the larger UK life insurers such as L&G, Aviva and Prudential might also be interested in the business.
Just Retirement, which has 270 employees over two sites, had total sales of £763.5m in 2007/08.
The specialist pensions firm is the sixth largest provider of annuities and the second largest provider of equity release in the UK.
