UP on the 22nd floor of Aviva’s tower block in the City, Richard Harvey can see across London to Kent.

“Ooh look,” he says, pointing to his left. “They’ve opened Tower Bridge for us.”

Harvey, chief executive of Aviva, the insurance giant, gives a genial smile. Then he explains that, despite the stupendous views, Aviva’s skyscraper — wedged between Lord Foster’s Gherkin and Lord Rogers’ Lloyd’s building — is a bit expensive. Aviva takes only a few floors but should probably look for somewhere cheaper.

Moving in with the Pru?

The mention of Aviva’s biggest British rival, Prudential, wipes the smile from Harvey’s face in an instant. Many think that Aviva, the product of many mergers itself — Norwich Union, Commercial Union, General Accident — must have Prudential in its sights. Harvey, formerly boss of Norwich Union, is a merger specialist, after all.

He sighs. “One of the things you learn when you have been in the job as long as I have is to say nothing at all about that kind of provocative comment.”

Nothing? “I mean nothing. Sir Eddie George had a wonderful phrase when he was governor of the Bank of England: ‘If anything I have said has given you any indication at all about the likely direction of future interest rates, then you have misunderstood me’. If anything I say now gives you any indication, you have misunderstood me too.”

The grin returns. Birmingham-born Harvey, lean and lanky with a sweep of grey hair over an angular face, doesn’t like to say no. It goes against his people-friendly front.

But beneath the vicarish exterior there is a flinty core, as many will testify. Harvey, 54, has built Aviva into the fifth-biggest insurance group in the world (behind America’s AIG, Germany’s Allianz, France’s Axa and Holland’s ING) and he is acutely aware that it is weak in Asia and America, where the Pru is strong.

Then surely he will admit that the logic of consolidation demands that Britain’s big two have a look at each other?

Harvey says he will answer that in another way. Since the stock markets collapsed in 2001, shareholders have been less obsessed with “exciting global transactions” and keener to see improvements in efficiency.

“We formed this group when the FTSE 100 index was at 6,900, the highest level ever, and we have just run for five years against the worst possible backdrop.

“The message has been: you have to work hard not just to do a merger but fight the difficult effects that are being injected into the company from the worst background you have had.

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