The Ace Group of Companies has completed its $2.56 billion acquisition of Combined Insurance Companies of America.

The global insurance giant, whose executive offices are in Bermuda, announced yesterday that it had completed its acquisition of 100 percent of the outstanding shares of CICA and certain of its subsidiaries from Aon Corporation.

In accordance with the purchase agreement, the purchase price reflects on a dollar-for-dollar basis an increase to Combined's net worth that occurred between the signing and the closing of the transaction.

Evan Greenberg, Ace Ltd.'s chairman and chief executive officer, said: "We are delighted to close this important transaction ahead of schedule. Ace and Combined teams have been working closely together, making plans to achieve both our efficiency and growth objectives. We have been building considerable momentum over the last three months so we can hit the ground running beginning today."

CICA is headquartered in Illinois and is a leading underwriter and distributor of specialty individual accident and supplemental health insurance products targeted at middle income consumers in the US, Europe, Canada and the Asia Pacific region and serves more than four million policyholders world-wide.

Aon Corp. said it extracted a one-time dividend of $325 million from Combined Insurance before closing the deal.

Aon Corp. alo announced yesterday it had also completed the sale of Sterling Life Insurance Cos. to Munich Re for $352 million. After-tax proceeds from the sales are about $2.7 billion and Aon expects to record a pretax gain of around $1.3 billion in the second quarter.