Your company has just announced its impending merger at a packed press conference. It is the first you have heard of it. The only two words you properly register, in all the din of promised synergies from the complementary fit of the two businesses, are cost and savings. That means redundancies. What do you do next?

The current wave of consolidation sweeping the financial services industry is making this an increasingly frequent question. For some, the search consultants and headhunters, it is a very profitable question. For the rest, the employees, the question is more complicated.