THE HAGUE, 10/11/06 - Aegon is acquiring pensions manager Ergo Hestia of Poland. The purchase dovetails with the insurer's plans for growth in Central and Eastern Europe. The purchase price was not disclosed yesterday.

Ergo Hestia manages over 650 million euros in assets for 372,796 pension account clients. After the takeover, which still requires the approval of supervisory authorities, Aegon will manage the pension accounts of around 1.2 million clients in the region. "Pensions remain an important part of Aegon's growth strategy," said CEO Don Shepard.

Aegon had already made a move in Poland last year with the acquisition of life insurer Nationwide Poland. The Polish subsidiaries will have to achieve further growth under their own steam, as national regulations make new acquisitions impossible for now.

Aegon announced its takeover plans yesterday at the presentation of third-quarter results. The insurer achieved net profit up 10 percent from a year earlier at 679 million euros, whereas analysts had forecast a drop of 12 percent.

The profit growth partly reflected good investment results, yielding the insurer 325 million euros. This was over half as much again as in the 2005 third quarter (209 million).

Over the first nine months, investment results however shrank by 60 percent, partly as a result of revaluation of derivatives. Due to the lower investment result, net profit was down 4 percent from the year-earlier period at 1.97 billion euros.

Conversely, pre-tax operational profit rose in the first nine months by nearly two-fifths to 2.09 billion euros. This shows that the core activity, selling and managing insurance, performed well. The home markets of the Netherlands, the US and UK all contributed to the higher operational profit.

Aegon also announced yesterday that it plans to drop its bourse listings in Zurich and Frankfurt. Trading volumes in Aegon shares are low on both bourses.