Zurich’s £8.1bn swoop for Beazley gets the green light from London’s High Court

The last legal obstacle standing between Zurich Insurance and full ownership of Beazley has been cleared. Earlier today the High Court of England and Wales sanctioned the scheme of arrangement underpinning Zurich's takeover of the Lloyd's specialist insurer, with Mrs Justice Joanna Smith telling the hearing she was "satisfied the relevant requirements for the exercise of my discretion are met in this case."

Nobody turned up to oppose it. Andrew Thornton KC, acting for Beazley, told the court the board had unanimously backed the deal and that it would "not have any adverse impact on the interests of the company's creditors" , a formality, but one that signals a clean run to completion.

Read next: European Commission clears Zurich's £8.1 billion acquisition of Beazley

The sign-off caps a deal that's been running since January, when Zurich's first approach was dismissed by Beazley's board as undervaluing the business. Two sweetened bids later, shareholders backed the improved terms, 1,310p in cash per share plus a 25p dividend, worth 1,335p in total, at a court meeting in April, with more than 99% of votes in favour.

That price is a 59.8% premium on Beazley's 820p closing share price from mid-January, and values the deal at roughly £8.1 billion, or about $10.9 billion at the exchange rate set out in Zurich's own transaction announcement.

Zurich confirmed on 14 September that every regulatory approval was in place, leaving Tuesday's hearing as the final formality. The transaction is now on track to take effect on 1 October, with cash due to reach shareholders' accounts within a fortnight.

Read next: Zurich expects earnings lift from transformative Beazley acquisition

The more interesting question isn't the price, it's what gets built once the deal closes. Zurich is folding Beazley's cyber, marine and specialty lines expertise, along with its Lloyd's platform, into a single global specialty division headquartered in London. Zurich expects the combined book to write around $15 billion in specialty gross written premiums, up from roughly $9 billion today.

Beazley started out in 1986 as Beazley, Furlonge & Hiscox, a single Lloyd's underwriting agency, before growing into one of the market's largest managing agents  particularly in cyber, a line it helped pioneer.

That heritage, and the Lloyd's licences attached to it, is arguably the real prize for Zurich: instant, large-scale access to a market it had previously only reached at arm's length.

Erin Sims, senior financial services analyst at RSM UK, has called the tie-up one of the most significant consolidations in specialty insurance in more than a decade, and expects it to prompt competitive responses from rival carriers and other Lloyd's players, potentially accelerating consolidation across the market while pushing more investment into cyber risk modelling and threat intelligence.