Arthur J. Gallagher → AssuredPartners
Gallagher's $13.45bn cash purchase of AssuredPartners, a middle-market broker built by private equity, was the largest acquisition in Gallagher's history and, in the words of the seller GTCR, the largest sale of a US insurance broker to a strategic buyer; an antitrust review delayed completion to August 2025.
An all-cash purchase of a private-equity-owned middle-market broker, the largest sale of a US insurance broker to a strategic buyer.
- Value
- $13.4B
- Announced
- December 2024
- Completed
- August 2025
- Sector
- Insurance
- Deal type
- acquisition
- Acquirer
- Arthur J. Gallagher (United States)
- Target
- AssuredPartners (United States)
Why it mattered
AssuredPartners was a buy-and-build. GTCR founded it in 2011 with Jim Henderson, sold a majority to Apax in 2015 and took control back in a 2019 recapitalisation; along the way it bought dozens of smaller brokers, 32 in 2021 alone. By the time of the sale it had 10,900 staff in about 400 offices in the US, the UK and Ireland, and $2.9bn of revenue and $938m of EBITDAC in the year to September 2024.
Gallagher, ranked by AM Best as the world's third-largest broker behind Marsh McLennan and Aon, announced on 9 December 2024 that it would pay $13.45bn, 14.3 times EBITDAC. Counting a $1.0bn deferred tax asset the net price was about $12.45bn, or 11.3 times after synergies. The deal belonged to a wave of big-broker purchases in the middle market: Aon had completed its $13bn purchase of NFP in April 2024 and Marsh McLennan its $7.75bn purchase of McGriff that November.
Gallagher raised the money immediately — $8.5bn from a share offering on 11 December 2024, another $1.28bn when the underwriters exercised their option in January, and $5.0bn of senior notes on 19 December. It had expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, but in March it disclosed a second request for information from the Federal Trade Commission, and the deal did not close until 18 August 2025.
What it left behind
The cash sat on Gallagher's balance sheet for eight months and earned about $287m of interest in the first half of 2025, income that lifted results while Gallagher waited and weighed on its year-on-year comparisons in 2026. At closing Gallagher granted $316m of retention awards in its shares to 572 former AssuredPartners staff. By the second quarter of 2026 its brokerage and risk-management revenue was growing 24%, 6% of it organic, and it still flagged the integration of AssuredPartners, "the largest acquisition in its history", as a risk to investors. Raising the full price at signing removes financing risk from a long antitrust review, but the buyer then carries the cost of the capital, and the dilution, for as long as the regulator takes.