The insurer has announced that it will no longer seek to acquire the financial services group.
Insurance company giant Chubb Ltd. recently announced that it has dropped its pursuit of acquiring The Hartford Financial Services Group.
This decision has concluded two turbulent months of offers and rejections between the firms.
Over the last couple of months, the Chubb insurance company made three takeover offers to The Hartford Financial Services Group, each of which was turned down. The end of the insurer’s acquisition attempts also means that the city of Hartford can feel notably more secure about the employment situation there.
“The chapter with The Hartford is over,” said Evan Greenberg, Chubb CEO in a conference call last week with Wall Street analysts. “We have moved along.”
According to Greenberg, The Hartford Financial Services Group was only one among several potential acquisitions the insurer has been examining. As a result, it was not in any rush to try to make a deal with the group.
The Hartford is viewing this time as an opportunity to reaffirm its confidence in its insurance company plan.
Though The Hartford did not immediately release a statement upon the conclusion of the takeover efforts, its statement a week beforehand said that its board of directors had unanimously reaffirmed its confidence and convictions in the company’s strategic business plan.
There are currently 6,100 people employed by the Hartford in Connecticut alone. Thousands of those individuals work at the company’s Asylum Hill neighborhood headquarters. The insurer and financial services group was founded there in 1810. It has been pursued for acquisition several times since then, including attempts by CVS Health Corp. from Rhode Island, and Aetna, also from Connecticut.
That said, each takeover attempt makes elected officials in Hartford, Connecticut jittery about the risk of widespread job losses at the insurance company. Should a large company take the insurer over, it would be likely that the headquarters would be hit hard with job losses or an exit altogether. The rejection of another takeover attempt has allowed those elected officials, as well as the office workers there to breathe a sigh of relief.