Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL)?bought out 100 per cent of the is­sued share cap­i­tal of Globe In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny of Ja­maica Ltd from Las­celles de Mer­ca­do (LdM) for US$38 mil­lion. In a joint state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, GHL and LdM said the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of this trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to all nec­es­sary ap­provals from the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vice Com­mis­sion of Ja­maica.

"Globe is a ma­jor play­er in the gen­er­al in­sur­ance mar­ket in Ja­maica un­der­writ­ing the fol­low­ing class­es of in­sur­ance busi­ness; prop­er­ty, mo­tor, li­a­bil­i­ty, ac­ci­dent, en­gi­neer­ing and ma­rine," the state­ment read. "Ac­cord­ing to GHL's Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Jef­frey Mack, The ac­qui­si­tion of Globe is an ex­cel­lent fit for GHL's re­gion­al growth strat­e­gy and puts us in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion in the gen­er­al in­sur­ance mar­ket in Ja­maica, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent share."

GHL has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­vestor in the Ja­maican mar­ket, hav­ing es­tab­lished Guardian Life Ltd in Ju­ly 1999, fol­low­ing its ac­qui­si­tion of the in­di­vid­ual life and pen­sion port­fo­lios of Ja­maica Mu­tu­al, Crown Ea­gle, Dy­oll Life and Hori­zon Life.