The Scoop
Retirement services provider Voya Financial has fielded takeover interest in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.
The outreach is informal, no talks are ongoing, and people close to the $9 billion company say that neither management nor the company’s board are seeking to transact — but it comes at a time of consolidation across the financial services space.
Among the interested parties: Principal Financial, a $25 billion competitor to Voya, which expressed interest earlier this year, according to some of the people. Nothing came of the approach, those people said. (That interest predated an activist campaign at Voya.) Voya manages about $350 billion in assets; Principal manages around $770 billion.
Principal, which has a sizable workplace retirement business, could again seek a deal with the company, according to other people familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Principal did not return a request for comment. Spokespeople for Voya declined to comment.
Voya has been considered an attractive takeover target from almost the moment it spun out of Dutch financial giant ING in 2013. It has fielded episodic interest from acquirers, either for all of the company or for its stop-loss business: In 2020, the Financial Times reported that the insurance group had held talks with multiple bidders, including Principal.
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The company has been under pressure to sell itself: activist investor TOMS Capital took a stake in Voya earlier this year, and has been applying significant pressure behind the scenes, people familiar with the matter said. Publicly, TOMS has demanded that the company initiate a strategic review and engage with “all interested parties.”
TOMS has a track record of catalyzing M&A: Its pressure at Kellogg spinoff Kellanova led to a $36 billion acquisition by Mars, and it pushed for change at Tylenol parent Kenvue, which sold itself to Kimberly-Clark in a $48 billion deal last year. A spokesperson for TOMS did not return a request for comment.