Lex Life & Pensions announces new owner

As you may be aware, Lex Life & Pensions S.A. (LL&P) the Luxembourg-based insurance company, whose largest shareholder is Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A, has been in the process of changing its structure over the past few weeks due to the difficult situation of Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A. 

We are pleased to announce that LL&P have now signed an agreement with NEWPELGROUP (NPG), whereby NPG shall acquire the LL&P portfolio. As part of this agreement, NPG will take on all of LL&P employees and intellectual property.

The intention is to transfer all of the LL&P policies to the Luxembourg subsidiary of NPG – Altraplan. However this transfer is subject to the approval of both the Luxembourg regulatory authorities as well as the local authorities in the countries in which LL&P operate.

In the meantime, due to the difficulties with Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A., LL&P have transferred the securities underlying their customers’ insurance policies to another custodian bank – BNP Paribas Luxembourg. A custodian bank is responsible for “holding” clients’ assets on behalf of the insurance company for the benefit of clients and we believe this is a very positive step by LL&P.

As Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A still runs ongoing operations, any client who has previously appointed Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A as investment manager will find that appointment remains active, however as of 24 October 2008, the day to day investment management for the three sub-funds of Landsbanki (Defensive, Balanced and Active) was transferred from Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A to Jupiter Asset Management. The overall responsibility for the management of customers’ assets shall however, still be retained by Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A, meaning that any fund switches etc will need to be signed off by the bank.

As OMM are already familiar with NPG and Altraplan, we feel this to be a positive step whereby LL&P can detach themselves from the current Landsbanki situation and continue to build on the products and services of both companies. We are particularly pleased that the day to day management of the funds will now be carried out by Jupiter Asset Management and hope to see some improvement in the investment performance as a result of this change.

For more information on NPG or Jupiter Asset Management please see the links below:

www.newpelgroup.com
www.jupiteronline.co.uk