British insurer Britannic is poised to buy the closed life fund of Cornhill Insurance, a unit of Germany's Allianz, for up to 300 million pounds ($549 million), the Financial Express reported on Sunday. The sale is thought to be handled by Allianz brokerage Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the newspaper said, without citing sources.
A spokeswoman for Allianz declined to comment, while Britannic could not be reached on Sunday.
Many life funds have closed their books to new business as the result of a three-year bear market and tighter funding requirements.
Closed books are policies that are no longer sold but are still on the books of a life insurance company as premium-paying policies.
But few deals have so far been completed owing to close regulatory scrutiny and the difficulties of taking over existing policies, many of which will run for decades.