Fast bucks all round as Saga and the AA form the Victor Meldrew conglomerate

The £6 billion merger of Saga and the AA is a gift for cartoonists: a company whose ideal customer is Victor Meldrew with a broken fan-belt on the hard shoulder of the A22. To complete a brand conglomerate for grandads — and since all three are owned by private equity funds — why not bring in Boots the Chemist as well? But most of all, the deal is another gift for the GMB union, whose leaders Paul Kenny and Paul Maloney have led such a creative campaign to blacken the name of private equity that they ought to be preparing their acceptance speeches for next year’s Baftas. They have already ensured that the AA — which was acquired by Permira and CVC Capital in 2004 for £1.75 billion, and subsequently shed 3,000 jobs — has had ‘more media coverage this year than the Iraq war’ (according to a rival union leader) even though the GMB is said to have only 100 members among AA patrolmen.