LV’s private equity group, which sought to purchase it yesterday failed to eliminate job losses amid growing outrage over the deal.
US-based Bain Capital refused to give firm commitments on the 1,500-strong workforce, or shed any light on its plans for LV’s current bosses.
Bain chief executive Mark Hartigan said at the weekend that it was possible for him to make personal gains from the Bain takeover.
US-based Bain Capital said its £530million bid, which will earn members as little as £100 each, would help LV to become ‘sustainable’ and ‘achieve long-term success’. Pictured: Sign on the outside of the offices of the Liverpool Victoria insurance company in Bournemouth
After days of criticism over the sale – which would mean the 178-year-old insurer is no longer a mutual owned by its members – Bain Capital finally broke its silence yesterday.
It said in a statement that its £530million bid, which will earn members as little as £100 each, would help LV to become ‘sustainable’ and ‘achieve long-term success’.
Claiming it planned to increase the number of policyholders from 1.2million to ‘over two million’, Bain said it would help LV to ‘reclaim its position as a top-three provider of life insurance products’.
However, it did not reveal the exact method.
Bain’s managing director Matt Popoli said LV ‘needs capital to address its heavy debt pile, fund its pension liabilities and invest for growth’.
But Labour MP Gareth Thomas, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on mutuals, warned: ‘There’s absolutely no sustained detail… we don’t know who the directors of the board will be, whether there will be a big job-cutting programme, and what long-term changes there will be.’
Baroness Altmann, a Tory peer and former work and pensions minister, said: ‘I don’t think we have any more real information than we did before… there’s no commitment to protect jobs.’
LV’s members can vote on the deal by post or online until December 8, or during a web session on December 10.