Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- MetLife Inc. Chief Financial Officer William Wheeler said the insurer is better positioned to acquire businesses outside the U.S. after the recession hobbled competitors’ ability to bid on such assets.

“I like our chances -- we’ve come through this crisis pretty well,” Wheeler said today at the Barclays Plc Global Financial Services Conference in New York. “Our ability to pursue meaningful international mergers and acquisitions opportunities is there, and I’m not sure there are many others who are in that situation.”

MetLife, the largest U.S. life insurer, shunned government rescue funds and sold debt to bolster assets after rivals including American International Group Inc. were forced to seek federal help. MetLife made a preliminary offer of $11.2 billion for AIG’s American Life Insurance Co. unit, people familiar with the bid said in February, and Chief Executive Officer Robert Henrikson said in May he wants to expand in Japan.

AIG hasn’t sold the Alico unit, whose biggest market is Japan, saying in July that it planned to sell shares in the unit in a public offering. MetLife and AIG are based in New York.

While there is a “lot going on” in mergers and acquisitions outside the U.S., it is “extremely quiet” within the country, Wheeler said. “Certainly for a lot of companies who were sort of in trouble, the pressure to sell either all or a piece of their business is gone. Their attitude is, why sell now if they don’t have to?”

Looking for Acquisitions

Henrikson said in May that MetLife would not “waste a crisis” and that he was looking for acquisitions to extend the insurer’s lead over rivals hobbled by defaults on corporate debt and mortgage-linked securities. AIG had more than $100 billion in writedowns and unrealized losses tied to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market since the beginning of 2007. Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. had more than $11 billion through June 30. MetLife had about $10 billion in the same period.

Losses tied to the mortgage defaults helped push competing insurers including AIG and Hartford into federal bailouts. Lincoln National Corp., which also received government funds, agreed in June to sell a U.K. unit at a loss to divert capital to U.S. operations.

MetLife won a U.S. endorsement in May when the Federal Reserve’s stress test of financial firms concluded the insurer had the capital to withstand a prolonged recession.

Still, MetLife has been “suffering” because the company’s approximately $8 billion in so-called alternative assets including private-equity, real estate and hedge-fund assets have been “losing money,” Wheeler said today. Returns on the assets were $102 million below the company’s plan in the three months ended June 30.

‘Bleeding Has Stopped’

“We’re seeing some recovery in alternative asset classes, but we have a long ways to go,” Wheeler said. While “the bleeding has stopped” in private equity and hedge funds have started to recover, real estate assets were “still doing very poorly.”

MetLife is raising rates for U.S. dental coverage after an increase in claims because of the recession, Wheeler said.

MetLife slipped 20 cents to $39.36 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has declined 27 percent in the past 12 months, compared with the 29 percent slide in the 11-company S&P Supercomposite Life & Health Insurance Index. Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Financial Inc., the No. 2 life insurer, is down 30 percent and Hartford dropped 55 percent.

To contact the reporters on this story: Hugh Son in New York at hson1@bloomberg.net; Andrew Frye in New York at afrye@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 15, 2009 16:25 EDT