Generali profit rises 25 percent

MILAN (Bloomberg) — Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Italy’s biggest insurer, said full-year profit gained 25 percent, helped by its purchase of Toro Assicurazioni SpA. The company raised its 2008 earnings target. Net income advanced to 2.4 billion euros ($3.2 billion) from 1.92 billion euros a year earlier, the Trieste, Italy-based insurer said. That beat the 2.39 billion-euro average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Converium ups target for return on equity

ZURICH (Bloomberg) — Converium Holding Ltd., a Swiss reinsurer, confirmed a target for a 19 percent return on equity by 2009 as it seeks shareholder support to fend off a hostile bid from rival Scor.Converium also aims to expand its book of business to $3 billion, the Zug, Switzerland-based company said in an e-mailed statement. Converium plans to reduce its combined ratio, a measure of profitability of its casualty and property units, to 96 percent.

AIG buys Indian home financier

MUMBAI (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the world’s largest insurer, agreed to buy an Indian housing finance company Weizmann Homes Ltd.

AIG Capital India Ltd., AIG’s local unit, will initially buy a 56.4 percent stake in the home financier, Mumbai-based Weizmann Ltd., an Indian maker and exporter of textiles and founder of the mortgage lender said.

AIG Capital will own all of Weizmann Homes after other stakeholders of the Indian company agree to sell their stake, the statement said.

HSBC expands into Middle East

DUBAI (Bloomberg) — HSBC Holdings Plc, the world’s third- biggest bank by market value, plans to start raising client money this year to buy companies complying with Islamic Shariah law after a two-year experiment with its own funds.

Islamic private equity has been “slow to start, so its potential to outperform is that much greater,” Mahmoud Atalla, head of HSBC’s Amanah Islamic buyout unit, said.

The London-based lender started its Islamic private equity unit in 2005 with $50 million of its own funds to invest in European companies, according to Atalla.