Firm set for €1.3bn Irish Life takeover

Great-West Lifeco Inc, Canada’s second-largest insurer, named Bill Kyle chief executive of Irish Life Group Ltd, which the company is set to take over for €1.3 billion within weeks.

Kyle, who has worked for Great-West and its subsidiaries for 34 years, will succeed Irish Life CEO Kevin Murphy, who will retire at the end of this month after 42 years with the company, Dublin-based Irish Life said yesterday. Mr Murphy, 61, had postponed his planned retirement at the end of last year.

The Government agreed to sell the nation’s largest life and pensions company to Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Great-West in February to cut its gross €64bn bill for saving its financial system. Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s officials re-opened talks with Great-West last year after abandoning them in November 2011 amid concerns that the euro-area debt crisis would increase the costs.

Kyle, executive vice-president of wealth management at Great-West, led the group’s retirement business over the past two decades, during which its assets rose to C$35bn (€25.7bn) from C$3bn.

The Great-West agreement is the “first time during this crisis that a company in which we have invested has been returned fully to private ownership,” Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in February.