Old Mutual says U.S. IPO unlikely to happen by end 2012

(Bloomberg) -- Old Mutual Plc, the U.K.'s third- largest insurer by market value, said the planned initial public offering of its U.S. asset management business is unlikely to happen by the end of 2012 because of concerns that the U.S. recovery is faltering amid plummeting stock prices.

The public offer is not "mission critical" to Old Mutual's plans to pay down 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) of debt by the end of next year, Julian Roberts, the London-based chief executive officer, said on a conference call today. By the end of July the insurer had paid down 482 million pounds of its debt, the company said.

The company also reported in a statement that its first- half profit almost doubled as earnings increased in emerging markets, with net income climbing to 489 million pounds in the six months to June from 265 million pounds a year earlier. Earnings per share excluding one-time items rose to 7 pence a share from 2.6 pence a year earlier, a figure restated to show the effect of the sale of a U.S. unit, said the insurer.

The insurer is the fourth-worst performing stock on the eight-member FTSE 350 Life Insurance Index this year, having slumped 10 percent compared with the average decline of 7.8 percent. The shares traded down 1.8 percent to 111.1 pence a share at 8:39 a.m. in London.