Insurance companies are also adept at hiving off jobs to their own "approved repairers".

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The partnerships are typically formed when big companies decide to raise cash by hiving off hard assets.

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Hiving off Virgin Radio as a separate business made sense, said Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers analyst Keith Bowman.

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The council also recommends hiving off the ministries' routine work to quasi-government organisations modelled on Britain's executive agencies.

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Shropshire Council has set up a wholly-owned company called Inspiring Partnerships and Enterprise (IPE) into which they are hiving-off many of their services.

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Recovery will thus have to depend on consumers not growing faint of heart and on the Fed and Treasury successfully recapitalising banks and hiving off banks' bad debts.

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However my sources tell me that it is the proposed hiving off of the lawyers from the investigators that is damaging morale at the SFO and undermining its ability to pursue its large workload of around 100 outstanding cases.

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