These strengths are seen to complement the BoS’s corporate and business banking interests. The partnership should enhance the future of both brands as they will have access to each other’s distribution channels and be able to increase their exposure in all areas of the market.Although the deal will cause 2,000 job losses over three years, most of these will occur through natural wastage. Branch closures seem unlikely as there is little overlap between the two: Halifax has about 800 branches in England and Wales but only 60 in Scotland, while BoS only has about 28 branches south of the border, with 330 in Scotland. “This merger is a complementary fit for both businesses,” says a BoS spokesman. “As a bigger and stronger business we can increase initiatives for all our customers.”Although customers won’t see a “whole raft of changes” immediately, the Halifax says the advantage of being a bigger organisation lies in being able to introduce product changes and improvements quickly. Whether this will actually lead to better deals for customers remains to be seen.Are there likely to be further mergers in banking?The UK banking market has seen some changes over the past few years. Lloyds bought Cheltenham & Gloucester and linked up with TSB in 1995, and more recently bought Scottish Widows.

Barclays bought the Woolwich, while Royal Bank of Scotland succeeded in its hostile takeover of NatWest after a battle with BoS. With the trend towards mergers and acquisitions, the HBOS deal is likely to increase the chances of Lloyds TSB’s proposed bid for Abbey National being successful. That deal is currently being considered by the Competition Commission. Martin Cross, analyst at Teather and Greenwood, believes the announcement from the Halifax and Bank of Scotland “cannot but improve the chances of the Competition Commission approving that bid”.Further mergers are almost inevitable, with Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock thought to be possible targets.. Few television adverts at the moment can be more irritating than those from IT hardware companies, saying, “We invented the internet”, or “Two-thirds of the world’s websites run on our networks”. Few television adverts at the moment can be more irritating than those from IT hardware companies, saying, “We invented the internet”, or “Two-thirds of the world’s websites run on our networks”. One of the best things about the downturn in US stocks is that the commercials that used to ask, “Where can you find out about great companies like these? They’re all listed on the Nasdaq”, appear to have been silenced ­ for obvious reasons.
But one advertising campaign whose superficial-sounding slogan masks some meaningful depths is Nortel Networks’ “What do you want the internet to be?” Granted, campaigns that ask questions are not always a good idea.

Take Boots’ “Who cares?” adverts which, while designed to prompt the answer “Boots”, risked inviting an indifferent shrug of the shoulders.Ambiguities aside, Nortel may be on to something here Consider the following facts. While the Nasdaq has plunged, the number of active websites rose from 13 million to 28 million between March last year and February this year, and these sites attracted more than half a billion users; last year, 11 million miles of fibre network were laid.In addition, the internet is becoming more reliable. Users are less likely to give up waiting for a site to download and, with today’s data centre and hosting facilities, they also enjoy never-before-heard-of availability.Ian Cameron set up BT’s original web-hosting operation before becoming chief technology officer of the web hoster CityReach International. He argues that the reliability of the internet is improving because it has to: “There’s a fundamental shift ­ the dot-com hype has largely been and gone, and businesses that need to reach customers and offer services are still here … the key thing is they expect the same level of quality and performance that they got from the corporate data centre.”It’s no longer about flimsy advertising sites. One of our litmus tests with our end customers is that we would expect to get a phone call from the chief executive or managing director within half an hour if the service goes down.

It may be a corporate or a small firm, but if it’s down, it affects their stock price.”On top of this new-found stability, Nortel and its peers are looking to take the infrastructure to the next level. The last milestone in Nortel’s big push over the past three years is a concept it calls the “Personal Internet”.After building a big optical infrastructure ­ the company now supplies 17 of the 23 pan-European service providers, and estimates carriers will spend more than $100bn this year ­ and increasing bandwidth, Nortel is now adding content management and personalisation capabilities to the network. The aim is for each user to get the content that is relevant to them, both quickly and easily.The technology that makes up the Personal Internet will be able to switch and route packets intelligently, based on user preferences and content, and enable service providers to offer value-added services, such as advertising.When users are ready to take advantage of services such as video streaming, the internet will be there, ready. So next time you see an IT advertisement, perhaps it won’t seem quite so irritating.¿ This column is provided by TBC Research, an events, publishing and research group. Contact www.tbcresearch ..