Aviva
Amount paid for Friends Life: £5.8bn
The abrupt fall in the share price of Aviva when the insurer unveiled its unexpected purchase of Friends Life in December always looked overdone, which is one reason why I chose the shares as one of my tips for 2015. The deal has completed and the company’s brokers, JP Morgan Cazenove and Morgan Stanley, are free to publish research again, along with the rival Barclays.
There are some punchy numbers out there. The deal probably makes even more sense today than it did in December. It establishes Aviva as one of the most high-yielding stocks in the UK life insurance sector, given the strength of the cashflow coming from the Friends business, in a market where yield is