Singapore Life proves sweet for Spencer as he swings Aviva deal

AVIVA sold a majority stake in its Singapore operations for

£1.6 billion to a company called Singapore Life on Friday. What was not known is that the person behind the deal is… Michael (soon to be Lord) Spencer. The City grandee backed Singapore Life when it was a start-up in 2017. It was his first significant deal after he cleaned up by agreeing to sell NEX to the CME. He put in £54 million for a 36% stake through his IPGL investment vehicle. Singapore Life is a fintech — an online-only savings platform for the Singaporean and Asian markets — and has grown fast since launch.

When Spencer saw Aviva put the business up for sale he decided to go for it. With funding from the likes of TPG, Singlife has acquired Aviva and become one of Singapore’s largest savings businesses. Spencer’s own stake in the enlarged business falls to 8% but is now worth £98 million. In other words he has just made another £44 million and pretty much doubled his money. Again. Spy wonders what the Upper House will make of him.

A PHRASE for execs who always come up smelling of roses to live by: “He who smiles in a crisis has found someone to blame.”

A FLASHBACK to these pages in April 2019, when we reported that Canada’s GardaWorld was eyeing a £3 billion takeover of G4S. Our source was a man in a City pub “who gets it right three times out of five, making him more reliable than G4S”. G4S did not care for our tone and said it would be telling everyone who asked that we were completely off the ball on this one. Yesterday, GardaWorld launched a £3 billion takeover bid for... G4S. The apology is presumably on its way, but given that it is G4S, will probably be lost.