Genworth Financial announced in October that it had agreed to be acquired for about $2.7 billion by China Oceanwide, a privately held, family-owned international financial holding company based in Beijing. The company held a special shareholder meeting Tuesday morning at the Westin Richmond hotel in Henrico County. The company said about 96 percent of votes cast were voted in favor of the merger, representing 71 percent of Genworth’s total understanding shares of common stock as of the record date for the special meeting. The merger deal includes a cash infusion and debt reduction from China Oceanwide worth about $1.1 billion, which Genworth executives have said should make the deal more likely to win regulatory approval. Read the full news article here.
The deal still has to get approved from about a dozen regulatory agencies in the United States and overseas, including the Virginia Bureau of Insurance, and regulators in Delaware, New York and North Carolina. “We have done all the filings, and we have had a lot of dialogue back and forth with [regulators],” Genworth’s CEO Tom McInerney said in an interview after the meeting. “They tend to wait to really get going until after shareholders have voted.” Genworth and Oceanwide expect the deal to be completed by the middle of this year.
McInerney said Tuesday that he expects to remain with the company after the deal closes. “I have told Oceanwide that we are three to five years away from finishing the fixing of long-term care, so I am prepared to do that,” he said.
We will keep you informed as we know more about the regulatory approval timeline, but this is a great first step in allowing Genworth to continue to be a leader in the long term care insurance business.