Sun Life lists at local bourse today

Canada's largest insurer, Sun Life Assurance Co., starts today the simultaneous listing of its common shares in four stock exchanges worldwide, one of which is the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Alongside the powerhouse stock exchanges of New York, London and Toronto, the PSE will offer approximately 400.148 million of both primary and secondary shares to be created from the spin-off of a new parent insurance holding company, Sun Life Financial Services, priced at C$12.50 per share for a total float worth C$5 billion.

The listing of Sun Life Financial Services completes the insurance giant's process of demutualization, or converting Sun Life Assurance from a mutual insurance company owned by policyholders to a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Life Financial owned by shareholders.

Sun Life is the second foreign company to list at the PSE following the similar demutualization of its Canadian insurance colleague Manufacturers Life (Manulife) in September last year. More significantly, the listing of Sun Life marks the first attempt this year of any company -- local or global -- to test the Philippine equities market that has been badly battered over the past few months due to a number of controversial issues led by the BW trading scandal and the rift between the regulatory agencies.

Based on options chosen by Philippine policyholders for their demutualization benefits, Sn Life will pay the equivalent of some P4.204 billion as cash proceeds for around 12.08 million in allotted shares while about 13.536 million shares worth another P4.71 billion have been retained for trading.

Policyholders who wish to sell their retained shares have to wait at least 30 days from the listing date to be pooled and sold as a block with other selling policyholders at the prevailing market price.

Sun Life is a leading international financial services company providing a wide range of savings, retirement, pension and life and health insurance products and services to individual and corproate customers. It operates primarily in Canada, the US and the UK and also has operations in Asia (Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia).

By the end of 1999, Sun Life has approximately C$301.3-billion total assets under management and consolidated revenues of $14.7 billion. It has more than 11,200 employees worldwide and an extensive global distribution network of over 100,000 sales force.