Today’s Sunday Herald leads with an exclusive on an exciting and bold plan by SNP MSP, Alex Neil, to bring together a group of Scots financiers to buy back the Bank of Scotland. A figure of around £6 billion seems to be in the frame. Neil is an economist and a member of the Scottish Parliament Finance Committee and is bringing his contacts together in person this week at a meeting to be held in Edinburgh.
The idea is said to have been put to Alex Neil by Jim Spowart, the Scottish banker who founded Intelligent Finance, now employing 6,000 people in Scotland. The First Minister has evidently been made aware of the plan and is supportive of any proposal that will save Scottish jobs.
People thought to be on Neil’s invitation list include Sir Angus Grossart, recently appointed Chair of the Scottish Government’s Scottish Futures Trust; Sir George Mathewson, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland; Sir Peter Burt, former CEO of the Bank of Scotland; Gavin Masterton and George Mitchell, both former MDs of the Bank of Scotland; and Jim Spowart from Intelligent Finance, the originator of the imaginative strategy. Senior figures from Scotland’s successful insurance and pensions industries are also likely to be involved.
Alex Neil is quoted as saying: ‘If we can muster this group it would be a very strong and diverse body of senior banking knowledge. If successful, they could be the custodians of the Bank of Scotland. It would be another chapter in the bank’s incredible history’.
Certainly, if this visionary move can be brought off, it will exemplify two enduringly attractive business cliches:
- the ‘Phoenix rising from the ashes’ in Scotland reclaiming ownership of its iconic bank, weakened some time ago in the merger with the Halifax;
- and ‘thinking out of the box’ in the ability to turn a deadly externally generated catastrophe to entrepreneurial adventure for the good of Scotland.
Intelligent finance indeed.
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