Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Charles Prince agreed yesterday to sell Citigroup’s Travelers Life & Annuity to the US’s leading insurance company MetLife for $11.5 billion. The company will pay between $1bn and $3bn in Metlife shares. The rest will be made up of cash. Citigroup has also sold most of its international insurance businesses.

For Metlife the purchase gives access to a much larger distribution network. The contract includes 10-year agreements under which MetLife will make products accessible through certain Citigroup units. The deal involves Citibank branches and Smith Barney retail brokerages.

MetLife will acquire businesses that produced net income of $901m and total revenues of $5.2bn in 2004. The businesses which had total funds of $96bn at December 31.

MetLife already has a prevailing position in the U.S. individual life insurance market and the transaction will make it even greater. The company will become No. 2 in the annuities market behind Hartford Life Insurance Co.

For Citigroup, which tried to combine insurance, brokerage and banking, the task was too hard. Now the company will concentrate on retail and investment banking, because insurance appeared to be less profitable than its other financial businesses.

MetLife’s chairman and chief executive Robert Benmosche said on a conference call that the deal allowed them to increase company’s products, volume and size. He considers it to be a great opportunity for MetLife to be distributed through Citigroup.