This giant company with a name that sounds like alphabet soup is a global power in asset management and life insurance that is constantly expanding its empire. Yet investors who know plenty about its individual businesses are unaware of the parent organization itself.
Paris-based AXA, the world's third-largest insurer in terms of revenue, is also the world's third-largest asset manager with more than $600 billion under its control. In addition, it is France's largest non-life insurer and third-largest life insurance firm. In the United States it can do plenty of name-dropping, for it owns 60 percent of the Equitable Cos. insurance organization (recently renamed AXA Financial Inc.), which in turn owns 73 percent of the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette investment bank and 58 percent of the Alliance Capital Management fund company.The ever-aggressive parent company AXA operates in 50 countries. It increased its stake in Belgium's Royale Belge insurer to 98.7 percent in 1998 and won the fierce bidding for Guardian Royal Exchange, Britain's fifth-largest insurer, for $5.67 billion in 1999. Both are considered stepping stones in its quest to be the world's foremost insurance company. Having previously emphasized the purchase of insurers with blighted investment portfolios that it was convinced it could turn around, it is most recently said to be eyeing potential acquisitions in the Japanese and U.S. insurance markets.
"The big advantage of being global is that you spread your risk all around the world," AXA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Claude Bebear, nicknamed "Crocodile Claude" for his relentless acquisition pace during the 1980s, told Chief Executive magazine in April 1999. The flamboyant Bebear became convinced of the importance of both international business and the need to emphasize profits when as a young man he spent time in Canada setting up a life insurance branch for the small French insurance firm Ancienne Mutualles. He would one day head that company, inject what he terms an "Anglo-Saxon" attitude toward shareholder value and rename it AXA to sound less regional.
Describing himself as a "classical, market-oriented liberal," he has circled the globe explaining his strategy for growth while stressing how important each part of the world can be in effectively pulling it all together. His corporate philosophy is one of decentralized management, encouraging local managerial talent to work as it knows best in various countries. He believes that life insurance and asset management are converging in the modern world and is a player in the inevitable consolidation process that is underway.
Bigger claims, after all, require companies with more capital. Scheduled to retire in 2000, Bebear most likely will be replaced by similarly aggressive Senior Vice President Henri de Castries, a man who has compared today's asset management business to the gold rush in California where the most efficient players ultimately dominated. Outside the office, Bebear and de Castries are often hunting partners.
The company has gained the often fickle attention of Wall Street analysts based on what some of them believe will be a strong 19 percent average annual earnings per share growth rate through the year 2002 with only medium risk for its investors. Earnings were up significantly in 1998 due to sharply higher life insurance earnings in the United States, Great Britain and Asia that were in keeping with bullish expectations. Further improvement in French life insurance earnings and strong growth from both Equitable and Sun Life should give a boost to future results and put AXA on a course to equal the superior profitability of rival American International Group.
While Bebear is committed to developing systems on the Internet to help sell insurance, he maintains it would be a big mistake to push too hard and destroy traditional professional networks in the process. His use of the Internet is therefore to augment the work of professional agents, not supplant them. He has also worked hard to speed the computerization of all AXA's businesses to reduce costs.
The result of the merger of AXA and the once state-owned French insurer UAP in 1996, the company quickly cut 2,500 UAP insurance agents from its rolls and moved quickly to consolidate, a daunting process it has already completed.
AXA had acquired the then-troubled and certainly undervalued Equitable Life in 1991 at a bargain price of $1 billion and worked hard to successfully turn around its earnings. It was a bold gamble that paid off. Staffing was cut by 4,000, and annual premium and deposit growth soon reached a steady 20 percent a year pace, which is where AXA expects it to continue. Variable annuities have been a particularly hot product.
The goals are to expand its distribution system, broaden its product line and gain more upscale customers. Financial planning efforts in which insurance agents can also plan and sell securities is its one-stop shopping motif. Equitable's popular "financial fitness profiles" tailored to individual clients have already resulted in higher sales and stronger customer loyalty.
The Midwest and West portions of the United States have especially been targeted by Equitable for growth. Meanwhile, the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette investment bank is an aggressive full-service provider in the United States and selected overseas markets.
DLJ also boasts much-respected and profitable online brokerage DLJdirect, which has benefited from the rush toward trading on the Internet, and its Pershing unit, which has turned in record profits in processing services. Alliance Capital Management is the 18th largest U.S. mutual fund company, with more than $119 billion in assets, but has more than twice that impressive amount under management for big clients such as pension funds, financial institutions and banks.
An array of valuable antiques and collector hunting rifles in AXA's headquarters near the Champs Elysee in Paris indicates Bebear's reverence for the past. But his mind-set and that of his enormous global company is full speed ahead. Progress will continue to come from taking risks and buying assets cheaply.
Andrew Leckey answers questions only through the column. Address inquiries to Andrew Leckey, "Successful Investing," 98 Henry St., Dept. 183, Brooklyn, NY 11201, or by e-mail at successinv@aol.com.