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Comment: Phoenix boss reaches the finish line with a deal to suit everyone

AP
AP

Clive Bannister has the stamina of his four-minute-mile dad.

The deals junkie who spotted the profits to be made by integrating our pension and life savings into one vast, efficient pot, has finally taken over his biggest rival , putting to bed the demons from 2013, when the pair last tried.

His Phoenix takeover of Swiss Re’s British division merges the UK number one and two, and will have big synergies. A fine way for him to breach the retirement finishing line in March. The baton passes to Andy Briggs, who put Friends Life into Aviva in his last gig and is fit for the task.

It’s also job done for Swiss Re, which wanted out of the game long ago, particularly now the reinsurance market has picked up. UK annuities were far from core, and awkward Swiss rules meant they used far too much capital. Today’s sale releases cash and capital to write more “re”.

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It had tried and failed to do a London IPO, but this deal gets it a price at the top end of what the float would have achieved anyway.

Good work all round.

Plastic passions

Spend time at cardboard giant DS Smith and you’ll never look at a supermarket shelf in the same way again. All you see is wall after wall of landfill-bound plastic packaging. DS is getting stores to switch to recyclable alternatives, but it’s slow going and will take legislation next year to really get companies to change their ways.

It shouldn’t have to be that way. Vodafone is cutting in half the plastic mounting of its SIM cards, saving 340 tonnes of plastic a year. Easy. There are thousands of moves like this big firms can make. Why wait for state intervention?