Axa to buy 36.7% of Russian Reso Garantia, seek to purchase the rest

French insurer Axa announced Monday it would buy 36.7% of Reso Garantia from the firm's holders for 810 million euros (1.16 billion dollars).

Photo: Axa to buy 36.7% of Russian Reso Garantia, seek to purchase the rest

The company said that Reso Garantia was Russia 's No. 2 insurance provider in the first half, with 7% of the market, 6,000 employees and 18,000 agents. Axa added that it will take options to buy the test of the shares.

Reso is particularly focused on insuring vehicle owners against damage and third-party liability, reported first-half 2007 net income of 41 million euros on revenue of 446 million euros.

Axa is an insurance company with a group headquarters in France . AXA is not the name of a single company but a group of companies independently organized and operated according to the regulations of many different countries.

The AXA group of companies are engaged in life, health and other forms of insurance, as well as investment management. The AXA group operates primarily in Western Europe, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina , North America and the Asia Pacific region and the Middle East.

There are five operating business segments with the AXA group of companies: Life & Savings, Property & Casualty, International Insurance (including reinsurance), Asset Management and Other Financial Services.

The combined group has 189,000 employees and 122 billions dollars of revenues in 2004. If AXA were a single company it would rank as the 15th largest company in the world (based on revenues) on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 list.[