'Equitable may never recover'

EQUITABLE Life chief executive Charles Thomson today admitted the struggling mutual investment firm was unlikely ever to recover fully from its financial crisis.

He told BBC radio: 'The economic downturn, particularly over the last couple of years, has really taken that possibility very substantially away.'

The firm almost collapsed with a £1.06bn pensions black hole in 2000 and last week Scottish judge Lord Penrose delivered his report into what went wrong to the Government.

Thomson said there was an outside possibility that a critical report could lay it open to claims for mis-selling or fraud from former policyholders.