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A June 27 report that Athene Holding Ltd. is potentially interested in the insurance business of General Electric Co., which is best known for its long-term care reinsurance liabilities, is likely not a surprise to those who heard remarks made by James Belardi two weeks earlier.
The Athene chairman, CEO and chief investment officer, responding to a question at an investor conference about competition for blocks of business in the life and annuity space during that event, essentially volunteered a scenario in which the company might apply the structure of a recently closed transaction involving Voya Financial Inc.'s closed blocks of fixed and variable annuities to other challenging exposures. In that deal, affiliates of Apollo Global Management LLC, the parent of Athene's investment manager, agreed to take on Voya's variable annuity closed block through a new standalone entity called Venerable Holdings Inc. while Athene committed to reinsure approximately $19 billion of fixed annuities and acquire a minority equity stake in the new company.
"One-stop shopping for the seller where Apollo can take some things we don't want [and] we take things...