Tiner plans to beef up Friends Provident before selling

RESOLUTION, the buy-out firm founded by Clive Cowdery, plans to build a life insurer worth some £10 billion before selling it by 2013, chief executive John Tiner said yesterday.

Tiner, who served as chief executive of the Financial Services Authority from 2003 to 2007, said he aims to make three or more purchases, adding to the acquisition of Friends Provident last year.

Speculation regarding Resolution's next takeover has focused on British units of continental European insurers – such as the Edinburgh-headquartered UK division of Dutch firm Aegon, and the British arms of France's Axa and Switzerland's Zurich Financial Services.

It has also been linked to Legal & General and Edinburgh-based Scottish Widows, the insurance unit of bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group.

Tiner told The Scotsman that the acquisition of any insurer or asset manager would be driven by the "motivations of the venture" and their fit with the Friends Provident business, as opposed to geography. "We're looking for three or more acquisitions by this time next year," he said.

The enlarged group's embedded value (a measure which includes the estimated present value of future earnings from existing policies) would be more than three times Friends Provident's 3.1bn, he said.