Scor Faces Legal Examination Over Covea Deal Allegations
By Bertrand De Meyer
(Reuters) -French reinsurance company Scor said on Friday it has been placed under examination by a Paris court for the alleged actions of its former chairman, Denis Kessler, in relation to Covea Group's acquisition of PartnerRe in 2022.
The company's shares were down 12% as of 1106 GMT in a broadly negative market impacted by U.S. tariffs.
Exor, the holding company of Italy's Agnelli family, completed the sale of Bermuda-based reinsurer PartnerRe to France's Covea for $9.3 billion in July 2022.
In January 2024, French daily Liberation reported that a judicial procedure had been started in June 2022 related to alleged attempts to derail the deal.
Kessler, who was Scor's chairman for 21 years until his death in 2023, Adrien Couret, CEO of mutual protection group Aema, and Jean-Claude Seys, co-founder of Covea, were said to be among those investigated, according to the report.
Scor firmly denies having had any direct or indirect involvement, it said in a statement on Friday.
(Reporting by Bertrand De Meyer in Paris, Michal Aleksandrowicz and Hugo Lhomedet in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi)
