MinterEllison has advised TAL on its acquisition of Suncorp's Australian life insurance business for $640 million, making TAL one of Australia's largest life insurers. The transaction brings together two major life insurance businesses and creates a long term relationship between TAL and the Suncorp Group, including a portfolio of well-established Australian brands: Suncorp, AAMI, APIA and GIO.

TAL is a leading Australian life insurance specialist and insures almost 4 million Australians. TAL is part of the Dai-ichi Life Group, one of the world’s largest publicly traded life insurance groups.

This significant life insurance transaction is part of the recent trend of Australian banks disposing of some or all of their interests in life insurance businesses, following NAB's sale of 80% of its interest in MLC Life to Nippon Life, Commonwealth Bank's sale of CommInsure to AIA and ANZ's sale of OnePath to Zurich. MinterEllison has played a key role on each of these high profile transactions, acting for bidders on both the CommInsure and OnePath deals and in the necessary restructuring of the wealth business that follows in the case of the MLC Life and OnePath deals.

The MinterEllison team was led by Mark Standen (Partner), Maged Girgis (Partner), Siobhan Doherty (Partner) and Camilla Sinclair (Senior Associate) who were supported by a large multi-disciplinary team including Andrew Bradley (Special Counsel), Nicholas Pascoe (Partner), Bruno Solia (Senior Associate) and Jennifer Dornan (Lawyer).

"We're proud to have partnered with the TAL team, helping them to achieve this important milestone which creates opportunities for TAL to enhance its position as a leading Australian life insurance specialist," said Mark Standen, one of MinterEllison's lead Partners.