The end of the world may be nigh, but on the bright side the Lloyds TSB/HBOS deal is bound to generate a lot of printing.

It seems like only a few weeks ago - in fact it was just a few weeks ago - that the HBOS rights issue particulars thumped onto my doormat. That pack involved a near 200pp prospectus weighing just under half a kilo. Now the world has turned, everything has changed, and HBOS and Lloyds TSB shareholders will soon be receiving particulars about the extraordinary takeover deal revealed this week.

HBOS has more than two million shareholders, and Lloyds TSB circa 800,000, so it will result in a pretty sizeable chunk of work for someone. And that's before we get started on any re-branding, harmonisation of documents, communications to customers, promo literature, point-of-sale etc etc. In the short-term at least, a lot of people are going to be very busy.

However, I'm sure this will be of little comfort to the team at Williams Lea, who only recently secured a massive outsourcing deal with HBOS, said to be worth circa £200m. I don't imagine that a share price collapse followed by a rushed sale to a competitor would have been part of the risk assessment of this particular client. Meanwhile, if I recall correctly Xerox Global Services is the incumbent at Lloyds TSB. It will be extremely interesting to see who emerges the winner on the BPO front once the dust has settled on this particular mega-merger.