SOUTH Africa’s Metropolitan Life (Metlife) says it is confident of its future as a stand-alone entity despite the failure of a planned merger with life assurer Sanlam. Sanlam, Metlife and black empowerment company New Africa Investments Ltd (Nail) said this week they had called off talks to form South Africa’s second largest financial services group amid doubts about the commercial gains of the union. Nail, which has a 51% stake in Metlife, said it would resume a radical restructure to focus on media and financial services which started last year but was suspended in May when the merger talks started. – Reuters