Third Point’s Loeb Won’t Take SiriusPoint Private

May 14, 2023 by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat

Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb is no longer exploring a potential acquisition of SiriusPoint Ltd SPNT.N, according to a regulatory filing on Friday, a month after disclosing his interest in taking the insurance firm private.

Loeb, who runs hedge fund Third Point, and SiriusPoint were unable to reach a consensus on the value of a potential deal, the filing said.

The insurer’s shares fell 9.3 percent to $9.03 in morning trading. The company had a market value of $1.6 billion as of Thursday close.

SiriusPoint in a statement on Friday acknowledged the decision to conclude the acquisition talks and said it had made progress over the last seven months to improve underwriting performance, reduce volatility and rebalance its investment portfolio towards high-quality fixed-income assets.

The announcement in April about considering taking SiriusPoint private came less than three years after Loeb agreed to combine his hedge fund’s reinsurance business, Third Point Re, with rival Sirius International Insurance Group to form the global specialty insurer.

SiriusPoint “may be best positioned to execute on its turnaround strategy as a privately held company,” he had said in the regulatory filing last month.

Loeb owns a 9.31 percent stake in SiriusPoint, according to the filing.

(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Manya Saini; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)