The most interesting man in insurance was making waves again yesterday, as Clive Cowdery emerged as a potential buyer for the Prudential's life and pension assets in the UK.

Never one to miss an opportunity, the former insurance broker and salesman has sounded out his old friend Mark Tucker, the Pru's chief executive, about whether there was a deal to be done.

While no firm talks over a sale are in the works, Mr Cowdery's interest in the Pru — a £7 billion international company with seven million British customers — underscores his ambition.

The Pru is one of numerous insurers, banks and asset managers across Europe to have been eyed by Resolution, Mr Cowdery's newly floated financial services consolidator, since the beginning of the year.

Clerical Medical, owned by HBOS, and Friends Provident, valued at about £1.7 billion, are also on the radar, as part of a far bigger masterplan to bundle together some of Europe's motley underperforming insurers.

Buying Pru in the UK would be a neat trick for the man who made his first pile from selling Scottish Amicable to the insurer in 1997. He came close to buying “Pru UK” two years ago, when Mr Tucker explored a sell-off as part of a strategic review. It is a business that he knows well and could ably use as the springboard for subsequent mega-mergers.

Mr Cowdery is famed as a deal-doer. Each transaction he undertook with Resolution in its previous guise doubled the size of the group.

The 45-year-old former GE broker started his first business with a bank loan of only £500,000, but went on to turn Resolution into a £5 billion insurance monster, which he sold barely a year ago to Hugh Osmond, the pizza-to-pubs entrepreneur.

Mr Cowdery cashed in shares worth about £145 million from the Resolution sale, sealing his fortune as well as his reputation.

For his second Resolution outing, Mr Cowdery retained his close lieutenants — Mike Biggs and Ian Maidens — but also secured the regulatory nous of John Tiner, the former head of the Financial Services Authority. Resolution raised £600 million in last December's float — much of it from loyal investors, such as M&G, Standard Life and Royal London Asset Management — but it is keen to pursue deals of £4 billion to £5 billion, or more.

In addition to his City activities, Mr Cowdery chairs the Resolution Foundation. This not-for-profit organisation tries to tackle what the philanthropic entrepreneur describes as the “financial advice gap” for those who do not benefit from state aid but fail to consult IFAs. The foundation has sponsored research from consultancies including Deloitte and has convinced the Treasury to set up a working group to explore the issue.