Business on parade

Brief post on our illustrious new sponsors - cutting straight to the chase - This was mentioned briefly in yesterday's round up -

The insurance broker Aon today cut pension contributions to most of its 5,000 UK workforce in a move widely seen as heralding a clampdown by employers on workers' retirement schemes this year.

The company said the cuts were ­necessary because it operated in highly competitive markets and needed to reduce costs to remain profitable. It said the move was preferable to cuts in salaries or working hours imposed by other employers.

Unite, Britain's biggest union, called it a backdoor attack on pay and said it would not tolerate employers who attempted to use the downturn as an excuse to attack workers' pensions.

Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson said: "Aon's announcement has put us on standby and we will be keeping a careful eye on employers who may now try to use the credit crunch as a cover to permanently cut pension contributions.

"We will not stand idly by and allow the herd instinct to take effect."

Simpson said the union was prepared to work with employers who faced "genuine difficulties" by agreeing to temporary measures. But he added: "It is imperative that when the recession comes to an end workers' terms and conditions are not permanently eroded."

And here's another one:

The City's chief regulator signalled a crackdown on bribery on Thursday as it fined one of the biggest insurance brokers £5.25 million for anti-corruption failings.

Aon Limited, a subsidiary of Aon Corporation, the risk management and insurance group, was found to have made numerous suspicious payments over a two-and-a-half-year period from early 2005 to late 2007.

The fine was the first levelled against a company for failing to crack down on possible bribery and the sixth largest meted out by the Financial Services Authority.

The transactions, including two specific payments of €1.4 million (£1.26 million) and $3.25 million (£2.13 million) to unnamed third parties, were made as part of Aon's efforts to win business overseas.

Like many insurers operating overseas, Aon employed “introducers” to help generate new business. The two specific payments involved a Bulgarian insurance company and a company owned by the Burmese Government, respectively. ...

Aon Limited made 66 suspicious payments to win or retain business in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam, the FSA said. The payments, discovered in 2007, were reported to the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

And to be fair, after my (time-constrained and therefore brief) session with Google that's all I could find (and I read in passing that they've since pulled out of Burma). So I guess it could be worse.
It could be better though, we could have got this AON to sponsor us:

The vision sent by God, to Presiding Bishop Jeremiah Reed was to provide a television network established exclusively to enable the Apostolic ministry to preach the Apostolic doctrine in the fullness of truth