Agenda: Do big insurance mergers work?

RSA was one of the first major mergers in the consolidation that took place in the UK market from 1996 to 2001. It was the outcome of a merger between Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance. It probably went down as the textbook way of how not to merge large companies. To satisfy both sides, it appointed joint chief executives from the two companies who then waged a turf war for supremacy. True integration took years to achieve and did not really take place until both left. The company was in dire