IT'S a black day for Hampshire's business community.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the economic thinking behind the deal, and that's a hot debate, there is no denying we are losing one of our proudest business champions.

In a county not overburdened with truly big companies, one of the very biggest has suddenly all but gone and just as its future was starting to look so rosy.

Fresh from an emotional exit from the roller-coaster business of building warships and sitting on a £500m war chest to fund a buying spree in the lucrative support services sector, VT Group had its destiny in its hands.

Driven by a charismatic chief executive who planned to propel it into the FTSE 100 with an ambitious growth strategy, its Hampshire headquarters would have been at the centre of a vast global network of activities.

But instead of snapping up the rivals, it has itself become prey - and to an outfit that not so long ago it was itself talking about bidding for.

Now, there's palpable shock among the workforce at the speed at which their independent future has been whipped away.

Not a soul there wanted the deal. They looked at Babcock groaning under the weight of £2 billion in pension obligations, its order book cruelly exposed to the Ministry of Defence and the kind of biting government cuts they had just fought so hard to escape and it looked like everything VT was trying not to be.

None of this troubles the financial brains in the City, pushing pieces of their share portfolio around without a thought for the people on the ground. All they saw is the cold financial logic of £50m a year in cost savings and so they leant on the board to do a deal.

VT bosses can be proud they've effectively secured a 50 per cent premium on the level of the share price before markets got whiff of a deal and many former employees and locals will be toasting that windfall.

But the 2,000 VT workers in the region are today anxiously wondering how many of their futures are tied up in those £50m savings.