---
title: "AXA → XL Group"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/axa-buy-xl-group-2018"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2018"
---

# AXA → XL Group

AXA paid $15.3bn in cash for the Bermuda-based commercial insurer and reinsurer XL Group, the deal with which Thomas Buberl tilted the French group from life and savings towards what it called the world's largest commercial property and casualty platform.

An all-cash purchase that made AXA the largest global property and casualty commercial lines insurer.

- **Acquirer:** AXA (France)
- **Target:** XL Group (Bermuda)
- **Value:** $15.3B
- **Announced:** March 2018
- **Completed:** September 2018
- **Sector:** Insurance
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

Buberl, chief executive since September 2016, had promised to move AXA away from capital-intensive savings business and the swings of financial markets. XL, formed in 1986 by 68 Fortune 500 companies, had bought Catlin Group for $4.1bn in 2015 and wrote $15bn of gross premiums in 2017, about $5bn of it reinsurance. On 5 March 2018 AXA offered $57.60 a share, a 33% premium, valuing XL at $15.3bn (€12.4bn), and said the combination would be the largest commercial lines insurer in the world by gross written premiums.

The money was to come from about €3.5bn of cash, €6bn from the planned flotation of AXA's US life business and related transactions, and €3bn of subordinated debt, with about $400m a year of pre-tax synergies promised. Investors were unconvinced: AXA's shares fell 6.9% that morning, Bankhaus Lampe called the price "quite high even after synergy effects" and the debt ratio "rather stretched", and UBS noted that XL was mainly exposed to the United States while AXA wanted growth in Asia. After shareholder and regulatory approval the deal closed on 12 September 2018, and XL was merged with AXA Corporate Solutions, AXA Matrix and AXA Art to form AXA XL under Greg Hendrick.

## What it left behind

The financing went to plan. AXA Equitable Holdings floated in May 2018, raising $4.02bn for 24.5%; AXA fell below a majority in March 2019 and was out entirely by May 2021. Bringing XL's entities into the group's internal model at the end of 2020 added 13 points to the Solvency II ratio, against the 5 to 10 points AXA had forecast. The underwriting was harder. AXA said AXA XL had been "impacted again by adverse claims experience" in 2019, Hendrick left in February 2020 and was replaced by Scott Gunter from Chubb, and the pandemic cost the group €1.5bn of claims that year. After re-underwriting, AXA XL earned €1.2bn of underlying profit in 2021, and in the first quarter of 2022 it cut the natural-catastrophe exposure of its reinsurance book by 40%. As of September 2026 it remains AXA's commercial and specialty division. A transformational purchase of a risk book changes the buyer's profile on the day it closes; bringing the inherited underwriting up to the buyer's standard can take years and a new management team.

Source: https://www.axa.com/en/press/press-releases/20180305-AXA-to-acquire-XL-group