Insurance conglomerate Guardian Holdings Ltd will sell off its failing United Kingdom motor insurance business by the end of the year.

The Westmoorings-based GHL has started disposing of its Zenith motor insurance subsidiary in the UK by writing off 100 per cent of its goodwill.

This amounted to $397 million on GHL’s financial accounts up to its third quarter ended September 30, GHL group chief executive Jeffrey Mack said during an investors’ briefing at the Carlton Savannah hotel in Port of Spain on Wednesday.

Other discontinued operations amounted to about $499 million so even though the performance of GHL’s other businesses produced an after tax profit of $241 million, the group ended with an accounting loss of $655 million at the end of the third quarter.

’Zenith was an investment that did not work out the way we hoped when it was acquired in 2005,’ Mack said. ’Now we have ringfenced Zenith and it is no longer a drag on the business.’

Zenith has been put up for sale and GHL expects to sell it by the end of 2009, he added.

With assets of $20 billion and strong business operations in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, the Netherlands Antilles, the UK and other countries, Mack said the group was big enough and strong enough to ’take a hit’ on Zenith now.

He said the group remained on track to exceed its 2008 revenues.