Aviva insisted yesterday that it had made a "solid start" to the year, despite the investor fury surrounding the now departed chief executive Andrew Moss. He stepped down last week, recognising that shareholder unhappiness at his pay and the company performance made it difficult for him to continue.

Lloyds Banking Group is understood to have received an initial multi-billion-pound bid approach for Scottish Widows, its life assurance, pensions and savings business.

Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein’s take-home pay in 2011 was $16.2m, the investment bank disclosed yesterday, a 14.5 per cent increase on the year before, despite the company’s sliding profits and share price.

Gabe Watson, who spent 18 months in an Australian prison for the death of his wife during a honeymoon diving trip, has been acquitted of her murder by a court in Birmingham, Alabama.

Outlook So it's cheerio to Harvey McGrath. It is a mark of the way Prudential has conducted itself that he is probably not the worst occupant of the top seat in the life insurer's boardroom during the past few decades. The Ulsterman's tenure as chairman has hardly been a happy one, however.

The German foreign minister today pledged to "build bridges" in the wake of David Cameron's summit veto - insisting Britain was an "indispensable partner" in the EU.

Heiress's family dropped complaint against Banier but state prosecutor has pursued case regardless

The Financial Services Authority has slapped a fine of £195,117 on a broker for insurance fraud and banned him from the finance industry.

A British man accused of faking his own death as part of a life insurance scam has been arrested in Australia after a six-year hunt by authorities.

Slice them where you will, any collection of psychoanalysts is as mad as a parliament. Novelty beards, whirling eyes, twitches, deranged clothing, tics, jitters and habits you wouldn't want to go into. But Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was the maddest of the lot. His mainspring theory was that all human ills stemmed from not enough orgasms, and, in particular, not enough proper orgasms, which he plotted on graphs from foreplay to the molten afterglow of WH Auden's "Lullaby" (1940): "Soul and body have no bounds:/ To lovers as they lie upon/ Her tolerant enchanted slope/ In their ordinary swoon."

The insurer Legal & General surged up the blue-chip index last night on claims that it will be the "clearest winner" from regulatory changes to the insurance industry, as vague bid mutterings around the company also made a return.

Life insurance payments will be made within four weeks rather than taking up to four months, under new guidelines published yesterday by the insurance industry.