Insurance broker Aon Corporation’s decision to buy consultant Hewitt Associates for $4.9bn (€3.9bn) has all the hallmarks of two large companies huddling together for comfort amid a recession which threatens to be the worst since the 1930s.

Both firms will be painfully aware of their dependence for fees on corporate clients increasingly reluctant to paying any at all. The opportunity to cross-refer business cannot be sneered at. Cost savings of €355m by 2013 from back-office and other areas provides a more certain route to growing profits through economies of scale than business expansion.