(Bloomberg) -- Munich Re announced plans to return 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion) to shareholders through buybacks and an increased dividend, as the German reinsurer recovers from pandemic-related payouts.
Munich Re plans to repurchase as much as 1 billion euros of its own shares, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The buyback program starts April 29 and runs through May 5 next year at the latest. Based on the share price as of February 21, this would amount to around 2.8% of the share capital and would correspond to about 3.9 million shares, it added. The repurchased shares will be retired.
The company also said that the dividend to be paid for 2021 will be increased by 1.20 euros to 11 euros per share. Munich Re shares were 0.1% higher, trading at 257.55 euros at 2:01 p.m. local time in Frankfurt.
The pandemic has posed a major challenge for reinsurers who've had to deal with simultaneous claims across multiple business lines. The German company was particularly hit hard by event cancelations, a segment in which it was a market leader.
In response, Chief Executive Office Joachim Wenning halted share buybacks in 2020 and rewrote policies to exclude pandemics.
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