This month's highlights - Aon's record fine

Andrew Tjaardstra wrote on 8 January: Aon was fined £5.25m by the Financial Services Authority after the regulator gave the broker its largest financial crime-related fine.

The fine relates to dealings between 14 January 2005 and 30 September 2007 "for failing to take reasonable care to establish and maintain effective systems and controls to counter the risks of bribery and corruption associated with making payments to overseas firms and individuals". The FSA added that Aon "made various suspicious payments, amounting to approximately $7m (£4.82m) to a number of overseas and individuals."

A FSA spokeswoman said: "They didn't have appropriate controls for this (bribery and corruption) and they were operating in countries with a high risk of bribery and corruption such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam."

An Aon spokesman said: "Our controls were not effective enough. We have now rectified the situation and we operate differently using a corruption index. Any country with a high potential corruption index, we will not use third parties. Where it is medium or low, we have a more robust process of due diligence before approving payments to third parties."

Despite Aon's woes and interest rates diving to 1.5%, more pressing on my mind has been a trip to the dentist, five minutes at which cost £85. This, at least, appears to be a recession-proof business.

Adrian Colosso, chief executive of Heath Lambert, blogged on 15 January: I started the week catching up with an old friend and client in the construction sector. The conversation turned...to the lack of credit insurance but more importantly to how the slowdown in this sector was not isolated to the UK, but was affecting the supposed 'boom' countries of Dubai and China. The Middle East will see a halt in many of the huge, privately funded construction projects, with only civil projects getting the go-ahead.

- Finally, congratulations to Phil Davison, commercial director of PB and Insurance Age, whose wife Dani has given birth to a boy, Henry George.