James Moore: Tucker takes the Pru back up to the top

Outlook: Aray of light at the end of what have been two bad weeks in financial services. Prudential, once the sector's plodding old shire horse (big, slow, not very sharp) has been transformed into a thoroughbred under Mark Tucker. He's done it through the old fashioned virtues of keeping tight control of costs and focusing on selling profitable products.

By contrast to many rivals around the world. Prudential has not chased growth for the sake of it – nor has it piled on risk. The company – and its management – seem to have learned the lessons of the early part of the decade when the insurance sector teetered on the brink of insolvency and a couple of rivals went to the wall. The sale of a Taiwanese business together with a decision to call time on an attempt to divide up the surplus unclaimed so called "orphan" assets in its enormous UK life fund have helped a great deal, keeping the capital position healthy.

And so here is a rare thing – the dividend is actually being increased – which is something to be cheered at a time when so many others are cutting back (Aviva) or simply not paying at all (most of the banking sector which so obviously failed to learn the same lessons even though many of them owned insurers during the sector's bad times).

Tucker can congratulate himself with a job well done and he looks to be leaving the company in safe hands when his finance director Tidjane Thiam takes over.

The latter's first significant decisions seem to have been made – the strategy Tucker put in place will continue while the UK business will not be sold.

The latter is the sort of thing analysts like to suggest might be a good idea when they've got time on their hands and need something to write about. But the logic for such a move is hard to see, as Thiam has recognised, Pru UK might not be the most exciting part of the company's portfolio –but it is still a business with considerable scale that makes a healthy profit and provides capital to support other parts of the operation that need it.

Clive Cowdery, who snapped up Friends Provident this week as part of a plan to create a big lumbering beast by bolting it together with others in return for a fat fee, would dearly love to get his hands on Pru UK, because all that surplus capital would be very useful to him. Thiam, it seems, is made of sterner stuff the directors of Friends, and a good thing to. It's worth remembering that Prudential was once Europe's biggest insurer before it succumbed to a near fatal hubris, riding roughshod over its customers and alienating just about everyone that came into contact with it. Pru spent a long time in the doldrums as a result. Tucker, the former footballer, has given it a shot at regaining Premier League status.