'Manchester United have defied the credit crunch to secure the biggest shirt sponsorship deal in football history', writes James Ducker in The Times.
* The Barclays Premier League champions announced a four-year contract - from the end of next season - worth £80 million with Aon Corporation, the world's leading risk advisor/insurance broker. Guess who's going to pay the best part of that fee? The workers, of course. Aon announced in April that they would be cutting company contributions to the staff pension fund of most of its 5,400 UK workforce; it halved the maximum amount contributed by the employer to 6% of an employee's salary. The move was described by them as 'necessary to cut costs and remain profitable', and now widely seen by the market as 'heralding a clampdown on retirement schemes'. Nice timing, Aon, your employees will be seeing red in more ways than one.
* So, in order not to fuel the flame of Aon's hoped-for publicity, above is a pic of Wayne Rooney doin' a little dance in the current sponsor AIG's shirt. AIG, of course, is another discredited American insurance company (but they only paid £56.5m).
