"What we wanted to do all along is do this transaction from a position of strength," Klein said at the investor meeting last month organized by JPMorgan Chase & Co. "I would say this IPO, for a number of reasons, is a very, very important transaction for us."

The postponement comes after the worst U.S. housing crash in seven decades drained capital at mortgage insurers, including Genworth, that pay lenders when homeowners default and foreclosures fail to recoup costs.

Home Sales

While the housing market is improving by some measures, weak job growth and stricter lending standards are weighing on a recovery. Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in March for the third time in the last four months, declining 2.6 percent from February to a 4.48 million annual rate, the National Association of Realtors reported last week. Home prices have declined 34 percent since peaking in 2006, according to the 20- city S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.

Mortgage insurer MGIC Investment Corp. yesterday reported its seventh straight quarterly loss. Genworth, which also sells life insurance and retirement products, is scheduled to release full first-quarter results May 1.

Fraizer, who guided the insurer through its spinoff from General Electric Co. after a 2004 IPO and the financial crisis in 2008, was criticized for a "lack of urgency" in July by Highfields Capital Management LP. In 2010, Steven Eisman, then a fund manager at FrontPoint Partners LLC, joined a conference call to tell Fraizer management had "overseen a massive destruction of shareholder value" and that investor patience was wearing thin.

Quarterly Losses

Genworth reported five straight quarterly losses during the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis and swung back to deficits in the fourth period of 2010 and the second of last year. In July, the company blamed its latest loss on "worsening trends" in the mortgage-guarantee business.

The insurer said the Australian unit had "a modest first- quarter loss" as lenders pushed foreclosures to completion faster than the insurer expected amid economic slowdown and natural disasters in Queensland. The unit reported a $52 million profit in the same period a year earlier.

"Genworth is facing down the barrel of a very tough situation," said Adam Steer, an analyst at Brookfield Investment Management Inc., whose parent Brookfield Asset Management Inc. oversees about $150 billion in assets. "They were saying it's one of their most important initiatives and the very fact that that got pushed off until next year, assuming they can even get it done then, is definitely a negative."