(Bloomberg) -- Willis Group Holdings Plc, the insurance brokerthat’s merging with consulting firm Towers Watson & Co.,advanced in New York trading after it was named to join theStandard & Poor’s 500 Index.
|Willis climbed 4.8% to $49.30 at 9:45 a.m., the most in the330-member S&P North American Financial Services Sector Index,after rising about 5% this year through Monday. The broker willreplace Fossil Group Inc. in the index after regular trading onJan. 4, S&P said in a statement Monday. The transaction isexpected to be completed in early 2016, when Willis Towers WatsonPlc will trade under the ticker symbol WLTW.
|Related: Towers Watson approves $8.9 billion Willis deal;share jump
|Willis agreed in June to combine with Towers Watson in a dealvalued at more than $8 billion, helping it compete with largerrivals Aon Plc and Marsh & McLennan Cos. Investors approved thetransaction this month, and the combined company expects toincrease shareholder value by about $4.7 billion through reducedexpenses, cost savings and higher revenue, according to a Julyregulatory filing.
|The transaction offers “strategic benefits,” Jay Gelb, ananalyst at Barclays Plc, said in a Dec. 8 note to clients.“Willis’s proposed merger with Towers Watson would transitionWillis from a pure-play insurance broker to adding capabilities inemployee benefits and health exchanges.”
|The revision in the index may prompt money managers to shiftholdings. More than $7 trillion is benchmarked to the gauge,according to S&P. Fossil, a maker of watches and other fashionitems, will replace Towers Watson in the S&P MidCap 400.
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