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It feels bittersweet to find a half-price Johnny Cash CD, and hand over the payment to one of the thousands of Woolworths staff who will be out of work by Monday evening - part of a strange end-of-year mix.

Amid the gloom, there are plus points. Sir Sandy Crombie, as we should now address the chief executive of Standard Life, is honoured with a knighthood as a sort of message to others that caution in money management is to be valued - though, of course, it's under-valued by the round boardroom table of other banking knights whose titles date back to the era of aggressive corporate growth and greed. (Read more about Sir Sandy in my blog of 23 December.)

And Aberdeen Asset Management ends the year on a high, announcing at the start of 2008's final morning's trading that it has gained £40bn of funds under management through a deal with Credit Suisse, on top of more than £100bn it has built up through previous acquisitions.

If the Swiss giant's calculation of goodwill is any guide, it looks like a good deal for the Aberdonians, and bad luck for Schroders, which was reported to be on the hunt for the same Zurich business. The stock market this morning rewarded AAM with the sharpest rise of the day.

It comes at the price of a quarter of the share ownership now being controlled by Credit Suisse.

We don't know if that will turn out to be good for AAM. It builds on regions of the world - Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Australia - where it already has strengths, and adds access to Credit Suisse's distribution network.

The deal is a sign of a changing world order in finance, as distressed banks retrench and sell off assets in a bid to rebuild their balance sheets, meaning those who were cautious enough to avoid risky investments during the bubble years can now be in the market for such cut-price acquisition and could emerge from the recession in a strong position. As chief executive Martin Gilbert said, he would rather AAM is an acquirer rather than one of the acquired at a time of consolidation.

The dot-com bubble and bust was the basis from which Google built its empire in less than a decade. Similarly, the big banks of tomorrow may now be making their vital moves now. Could one of them turn out to be based in Queen's Terrace, Aberdeen?