As reported in this mornings London Times, Aviva has ended it's pursuit of Prudential UK, bringing to close for now the anticipated merger between the two international insurance giants.

As mentioned earlier this week, i'm going to start doing more reporting of company combinations in both the life and property casualty area, as I believe from what i've researched that given current prices for markets and the financial imperative to get bigger, we are going to see a significant increase in the numbers of mergers and buy outs in the insurance industry.