GREENWICH, Conn., April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- A consortium of international investors led by Stone Point Capital LLC submitted a binding offer on April 7th to acquire the business of AXA Re, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AXA (NYSE: AXA), in January 2007. The investor group has formed Paris Re Holdings Limited which will have an initial capitalization of approximately $1.5 billion to assume the ongoing business of AXA Re. The current management team of AXA Re, with Peter Gerhardt as CEO, will lead Paris Re and will continue the successful business strategy implemented in 2003. In addition to Trident III, L.P., a fund managed by Stone Point Capital, other lead investors include affiliates of Hellman & Friedman LLC, Vestar Capital Partners, Crestview Capital Partners, Och-Ziff Capital Management, ABN AMRO and New Mountain Capital. AXA is expected to retain up to a 10% stake in the company. AXA has agreed to a period of exclusivity with Stone Point Capital and intends to respond to this binding offer following consultation with the relevant workers' councils. Stone Point Capital LLC is a global private equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Stone Point Capital, which serves as the manager of the Trident Funds, has raised more than $6 billion in capital for investments in the insurance, employee benefits and financial services industries. Prior to the formation of Stone Point Capital in 2005, the principals of the firm led the private equity firm MMC Capital, Inc. Hellman & Friedman LLC is a leading private equity investment firm with offices in San Francisco, New York and London. Since its founding in 1984, the firm, through its affiliated funds, has raised and managed over $8 billion of committed capital and invested in over 60 companies. Hellman & Friedman has focused on investing in superior business franchises and as a value-added partner to management in select industries, including financial services, media, software, professional services and energy. The firm has pursued investments in the insurance sector for over a decade, which include Arch Capital Group Limited (ACGL), GeoVera Insurance Group, Ltd., MidOcean Limited, Mitchell International, Inc., and Vertafore, Inc. Its European investments include Formula One, ProSiebenSat1.AG, Axel Springer, and Mondrian Investment Partners. Vestar Capital Partners is a leading private equity firm specializing in management buyouts and growth capital investments. Vestar's investment strategy is targeted towards companies in the U.S. and Europe with valuations in the $100 million to $5 billion range. Since the firm's founding in 1988, Vestar has completed over 50 investments in the U.S. and Europe in companies with a total value of approximately $17 billion. These companies have varied in size and geography and span a broad range of industries. The firm's strategy is to invest behind management teams, family owners or corporations in a creative, flexible and entrepreneurial way with the overriding goal to build long-term franchise value. Vestar currently manages funds totaling approximately $7 billion and has offices in New York City, Denver, Boston, Paris and Milan. More information about Vestar is available at http://www.vestarcapital.com/. Crestview Capital Partners is a $1.4 billion private equity fund. The firm was founded in 2004 by a group of Goldman Sachs partners and colleagues who had served in leadership roles in the firm's private equity business and senior management. Crestview's founding partners have invested nearly $6 billion in a wide range of industries in North America and Europe. Crestview's investors include primarily entrepreneurs, families, and endowments, as well as the partners of the firm. Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, founded in 1994 by Daniel Och, is a global institutional asset management firm, with offices in the U.S., London, and Hong Kong, managing in excess of $16 billion. Och-Ziff has over $2 billion currently invested in Global Private Equity, which encompasses various industries and geographies. The firm seeks to achieve consistent, positive absolute returns that are not correlated with the equity market indices through investments in securities of many asset classes. ABN AMRO is a leading financial institution with assets of euro 880 billion and shareholders' equity of euro 22 billion as of December 31, 2005. ABN AMRO's Merchant Banking Group makes non-strategic private equity investments in the financial services sector using ABN AMRO's balance sheet capital. Its private equity investment portfolio currently includes significant minority investments in Korea Exchange Bank in South Korea, NIB Capital in The Netherlands, GFKL Financial Services in Germany and Bluestone Mortgages in Australia. New Mountain Capital manages private equity and public equity capital with aggregate assets under management totaling more than $3.0 billion. New Mountain is a generalist firm but has developed particular competitive advantages in the most attractive sectors of education, health care, business services, IT services, media, software, insurance, consumer products, water and power. New Mountain's insurance experience includes a recent investment in Validus Re, a newly formed Bermuda-based property & casualty reinsurance company. Contact Information: Charles A. Davis Stone Point Capital LLC (203) 862-2900 DATASOURCE: Stone Point Capital LLC CONTACT: Charles A. Davis, Stone Point Capital LLC, +1-203-862-2900 Web site: http://www.vestarcapital.com/

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