Mapfre (MAP) said this week that the acquisition, which had already been announced in January, of 50.1% of a new insurance broker from Banco Santander through its subsidiary Mapfre España has been completed, pending the corresponding authorisations. The broker will commercialise insurance for cars, multi-risk trade, multi-risk SMEs and civil responsability exclusively for Santander´s network in Spain.
Santander Corporate & Investment | A year after we renewed our coverage of Mapfre (MAP), our opinion remains unchanged. Despite foreseeing a notable operational improvement in 2021, we think that 2019 will probably be a complicated year.
Banc Sabadell | We analyse the strategic plan for 2018-19, concluding that its target of average ROE 19-20 of 20% is achievable, given that it would imply post tax profits of around 940 million euros and we forecast that it could best this.
Manuel Moreno Capa | Axa, Mapfre, Mutua and other big insurers have spent years settled solidly in the collective investment market, with their powerful fund managers. But today they are taking a step further: as insurers they are confronting what the experts call a structural fall in profits in their traditional business, they want to grow in others, but not only offering funds through their managers, but directly buying parts of the market, in other words other managers who bring their funds and their clients.
The Spanish leader in insurance has registered a modest performance of +14% in the last two years, the weakest among the insurers analysed at Alphavalue. Since August 2017, when the hurricane season began in the US, Mapfre has not been able to keep up with the rest of the sector. In Alphavalue´s estimates, the company should benefit from a first series of three consecutive years of growth in net profits in the period 2018-20.
The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings has begun to raise some Spanish companies’ ratings, which was expected after it improved its rating on the country from “BBB+/Positive” to “A-/Positive” on March 23. Bankia, Mapfre and state-owned Cores are the three chosen firms.
Mapfre said last Friday that it will restructure its business in the US “to optimise its profitable growth structure and concentrate the operations there in a smaller number of states.”
Mapfre has successfully placed subordinated bonds with 236 institutional investors from different European countries. The UK and Ireland took up 22% of the total issuance, France 16%, Germany and Austria 14% and Italy 13%.
MADRID | April 1, 2015 | By Fernando Barciela | The Corner caught up with Luis Iturbe, a board member with Spanish insurance giant, Mapfre. He emphasises the improving health of the Spanish banking sector, but says that the capital increases by lenders, notably Santander, have prevented the Spanish stock market to reach the same revaluations as its peers. He also states that markets in London and New York dished out an unreasonable level of punishment to the euro and Greece.