Friends/Resolution

Clive Cowdery has been a smart buyer of assets. The Resolution chairman looks to be smart at mergers, also. The £8,6bn combination is billed as a merger of equals, but Cowdery seems to be a little more equal. Not that Friends Provident loses out. The capital-short insurer avoids a rights issue or a forced asset sale. There will be cost savings of £100m a year to be shared between the companies, which should add about 7% to the market capitalisation. Moreover, Resolution’s closed life funds will ...