Gerling gets green light to sell reinsurance ops

Despite an attempt by German regulators to halt the sale of Gerling’s troubled reinsurance operations to a run-off consortium, the insurer has won a court ruling allowing the sale to proceed.Administrative Court in Frankfurt, Germany, ruled that the regulator’s objection to the sale of Gerling Reinsurance Group to Globale Management a consortium headed by Dr. Achim Kann has no legal basis.Gerling expects the decision to impact foreign supervisory bodies not to block the sale.”The deconsolidation of the reinsurance group now beginning to take shape will give the Gerling Group more freedom of action and greater planning safety,” says Bjorn Jansli, executive board chairman of Gerling’s holding company.It remains to be seen how the decision will impact the recent move by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Gerling Group’s long-term credit and financial strength ratings. That move, the rating agency said, was in response to the German regulator’s decision to halt the sale, and the future pressure the reinsurance operations might place on Gerling as a whole.