PARIS (Reuters) – The French reinsurer Scor announced on Friday that it was indicted as part of a legal case involving its former president Denis Kessler and concerning the acquisition of the reinsurance group partnerre by the French mutual insurance group Covéa.

“SCOR was indicted as a legal person in the context of judicial information in France relating to facts attributed to an association which would have tried to obstruct the acquisition of Partner Re by the Covéa group in 2022”, detailed the fourth European reassurer in the press release.

“In any event, Scor was presumed to be innocent, and vigorously refutes the slightest responsibility in connection with this case,” he added.

The French daily Liberation had revealed at the end of January 2024 that a judicial information had been opened in June 2022 concerning the acquisition for 7.8 billion euros of the reinsurer created at Bermuda Partnerre by Covéa to Exor, a diversified holding company controlled by the Agnelli family.

According to the newspaper, Denis Kessler, then president of Scor which he led for 21 years before his death in June 2023, Adrien Couret, director general of the Aéma Mutualist Protection Group, or Jean-Claude Seys, co-founder of Covéa, would have tried to fail the rapprochement.

The three men would be the sponsors of a Covéa destabilization strategy through the creation of an association, the Association for the safeguarding of mutual principles (ASPM), which notably filed a complaint in April 2022 against Covéa for “misleading commercial practices, fraud and breach of trust”.

The ASPM estimated that a rapprochement between Covea and Partnerre “would participate in the denaturation of the group which would still move from its initial mutualise model”, she had detailed in a press release.

According to Liberation, this “revenge” would be explained by the failure of Scor to get their hands on the Bermuda -based reinsurer. But the tensions are older between Covéa and Scor: the mutual insurer had launched in vain for a public purchasing offer on the reinsurer at more than eight billion euros in the summer of 2018, launching a conflict between the leaders of the two groups which came before the courts.

Conflict

A transactional memorandum of understanding to “find peaceful relations” was finally signed in June 2021, under the aegis of the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR) according to which Covéa paid compensation of 20 million euros to Scor and undertook not to buy SCOR shares for seven years.

“SCOR was indicted due to the personal involvement alleged in some of these facts of Mr. Denis Kessler at a time when he was no longer his legal representative but non-executive president of his board of directors,” the reassureor said on Friday, contesting “firmly having had the slightest direct or indirect involvement in the acts of this association”.

In a note published on Friday, Goldman Sachs analysts believe that this indictment, whatever the outcome, “constitutes a prejudicial obstacle, even if there is no impact on the group’s ability to continue its activities in the normal course of its business”.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, the title Scor lost 4.7% around 8:50 am GMT while the SBF 120 released at the same time 0.97%.

In this case, Jean-Claude Seys was indicted, according to Liberation, while legal action against Denis Kessler was extinguished by his death.

Adrien Couret, who is also a director and chairman of the Scor Risk Committee, is also currently indicted for slanderous denunciation and attempted scam in an organized gang, detailed Scor in his 2024 universal recording document. “Presumed Innocent, he does not recognize the facts reproached to him,” he said.

(Written by Bertrand de Meyer, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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