LONDON (Bloomberg) — Fortress Investment Group LLC, which manages private equity and hedge funds, agreed to buy the Bermuda-based reinsurer Alea Group Holdings Ltd. for $162 million ($320 million).New York-based Fortress will pay 93 pence a share in cash, it said in a statement yesterday. That’s 1.1 percent less than Alea’s closing price on Tuesday and a 15 percent premium over its average price for the last six months, Fortress said.

The sale to Fortress will “bring greater stability to the company,” Alea Chairman John Reeve said in the statement. The agreed price “represents an attractive proposal for all shareholders and offers them the opportunity to crystallise their investments in the company”.

Alea, which is closed to new business, put itself up for sale following record storm losses in 2005. Mark Cloutier, former chief executive officer of Overseas Partners Re, became Alea’s CEO last September, replacing Mark Ricciardelli, who stepped down after about two years on the job.

Fortress will try to make money administering Alea’s policies and eventually close the company, said Gerald Farr, an analyst at Seymour Pierce in London. Alea has “a pool of reserves with claims coming in through the front door, and they hope the former will be bigger than the latter”.

In a separate statement yesteray, Alea posted a loss for 2006. The full-year loss was $835,000, virtually zero a share, compared with a loss of $178.9 million, or $1.03 a share in 2005, the company said.

Alea is 39 percent owned by New York-based buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bloomberg data show. The reinsurer raised $165 million in an initial public offering in November 2003, with stock sold at 250 pence a share.

Yesterday’s offer is the latest from private equity seeking to buy unprofitable reinsurers. Scottish Re Group Ltd., a Bermuda-based reinsurer, last month approved the sale of a majority stake to buyout groups including Cerberus Capital Management LP for as much as $600 million.