The merger of Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co. and Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s life insurance businesses, touted for March 2003, has been scrapped. The decision, reached during a meeting Thursday morning between Tokio Marine President Kunio Ishihara and Asahi Mutual President Yuzuru Fujita, has thrown the already stumbling Asahi further off kilter.
The troubled Asahi will now lose out on the badly needed capital it had hoped to gain through the merger. In the plan announced in November, Asahi was supposed to sell its prized sales division in charge of new policy sales to a Tokio Marine subsidiary.
The funds would help Asahi improve its financial footing in preparation for turning itself from a mutual company into a stock company before merging with the subsidiary.