Résumé

As in other aspects of modern business development, the British insurance industry was a precocious exponent of mergers and acquisitions. Some of the first corporate mergers in history took place in British fire insurance during the late eighteenth century, and the corporate merger or take-over has remained a recurring feature in British insurance ever since. This paper aims to provide an overview of merger and acquisition activity in British insurance over the past 200 years, and to examine the changing causes and effects of this activity in the insurance sector.