Shareholders of Corebridge Financial and Equitable Holdings have cleared the biggest hurdle standing between the two companies and a merger that would reshape the upper ranks of the U.S. life, retirement and asset management industry. At a special meeting on July 30, 2026, Corebridge investors voted to approve the all-stock combination the companies announced on March 26, 2026. The deal now moves into the regulatory phase of its closing process.
A vote that was never in doubt
A total of 366,791,290 shares of Corebridge common stock, representing approximately 82.28% of the shares entitled to vote, were present in person or by proxy at the special meeting, constituting a quorum, measured against a base of 445,768,608 shares of Corebridge common stock outstanding as of the June 22, 2026 record date.
On the merger agreement itself, Corebridge shareholders cast 366,176,877 votes in favor, 119,470 against, 494,943 abstentions and zero broker non-votes. Two secondary items on the same ballot — a non-binding advisory vote on merger-related compensation and a proposal to adopt a new employee stock purchase plan — passed by comparably lopsided margins, underlining how little contested the meeting turned out to be.
Equitable shareholders voted the same day on their side of the transaction. Preliminary counts showed approximately 99.96% of Corebridge votes cast and 97.24% of Equitable votes cast in favor, equal to roughly 82.14% and 85.84% of each company’s outstanding shares, respectively. Corebridge President and Chief Executive Officer Marc Costantini said the outcome “signifies the broad stockholder support of bringing together two outstanding franchises which will serve more than 12 million customers”.
The terms shareholders just locked in
The vote ratifies the deal unveiled five months earlier. Corebridge (NYSE: CRBG) and Equitable Holdings (NYSE: EQH) entered into a definitive all-stock merger agreement on March 26, 2026, valuing the combined company at approximately $22 billion based on each company’s closing stock price as of March 25, 2026. Under the exchange ratios, each Corebridge share converts into 1.0000 shares of the new parent company’s common stock, and each Equitable share converts into 1.55516 shares, leaving Corebridge shareholders with approximately 51% of the combined company and Equitable shareholders with approximately 49%.
The combination pairs Corebridge, which had more than $380 billion in assets under management and administration as of March 31, 2026, with Equitable Holdings, which had $1.1 trillion in assets under management and administration and more than 5 million client relationships globally. Together, the combined company is expected to hold $1.5 trillion in assets under management and administration across retirement, asset management, wealth management, life insurance and institutional markets, with management targeting more than $500 million of run-rate expense synergies by the end of 2028 from consolidating operations, technology and vendors.
Both companies enter the deal from a position of statutory strength: at year-end 2025, Corebridge had a Life Fleet RBC ratio of approximately 435%, while Equitable had a Combined NAIC RBC ratio of approximately 475%. On a pro-forma basis, the combined company is expected to carry more than $30 billion of shareholders’ equity excluding AOCI and a leverage ratio of 26%. The pairing also caps a period of reshuffling on both sides, with Corebridge operating at arm’s length from its former parent since AIG worked through the final stage of its Corebridge exit, and Equitable continuing to trim adjacent businesses, including a sale of part of its group employee-benefits operation.
Who runs the combined company, and from where
Assuming the deal closes, the combined company will operate under the Equitable name and brand and trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol EQH, retiring the Corebridge listing. Corebridge President and CEO Marc Costantini will serve as President and CEO of the combined company, and Equitable Chief Financial Officer Robin Raju will serve as CFO. The combined board will have 14 members, split evenly between seven directors designated by Corebridge and seven by Equitable, including Costantini and Mark Pearson, who will serve as Executive Chair, and the combined company will be headquartered in Houston, Texas. Corebridge’s largest strategic investor signaled support well before the vote: Nippon Life Insurance Company’s three representatives on the Corebridge board voted in favor of the merger. That leadership map matters for advisors and plan sponsors watching for continuity: the executive suite and board carry over from both legacy companies rather than being replaced wholesale, a signal that servicing teams and product lines are meant to persist through the integration.
What still stands between the deal and closing
Clearing the shareholder vote removes one condition but not the largest ones. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approval and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close by year-end 2026. Specifically, closing requires expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, insurance regulatory approvals in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, New York and Texas, and approvals from certain other domestic and foreign regulators. The agreement sets an Outside Date of 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on December 26, 2026, by which the mergers must be consummated, subject to possible extensions, backed by a $475 million termination fee payable by Corebridge to Equitable under specified termination scenarios.
The path to the vote ran through a formal SEC review. New Equitable, the new holding company created for the transaction, filed a Registration Statement on Form S-4 (File No. 333-295565) with the SEC on May 5, 2026 to register the shares to be issued in the mergers, and the SEC declared that registration statement effective on June 23, 2026, after which the definitive joint proxy statement/prospectus was mailed to Corebridge and Equitable stockholders. The merger agreement and the transactions it contemplates were unanimously approved by both companies’ boards of directors in March, with each side running its own deal team — Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as financial advisor to Corebridge and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC as financial advisor to Equitable chief among them.
The near-unanimous outcome is itself a data point for a U.S. life and retirement sector where combinations of this size remain uncommon, even as smaller risk-transfer deals keep dealmakers busy through block reinsurance cessions between established life carriers, and brokerage M&A activity elsewhere has cooled from its prior pace. For the regulators who now hold the file, the question is less whether shareholders want this deal than what combining two balance sheets of this scale does to competition in retirement products. State insurance departments will be weighing policyholder protection and market concentration alongside the federal antitrust review, and neither process runs on a fixed clock, which is part of why the companies built extension language into their own deadline rather than betting on a single date. Until those sign-offs land, the shareholder vote settles the question of intent without settling the question of timing.
