KEY POINTS:
A leading Scottish businessman and a nationalist politician want to raise £6 billion ($16 billion) to save the Bank of Scotland from being lost within a second merger in seven years.
The bank became part of HBOS in 2001 when it merged with the Halifax and that company now looks set to merge with Lloyds TSB to avoid becoming a victim of the current chaos in the financial sector.
While that deal is seen by many as a fait accompli, Scottish National Party MSP Alex Neil and entrepreneur Jim Spowart, who set up Intelligent Finance, are seeking to bring together Scotland's "banking elders" to make an eleventh-hour bid for the institution.
The plan would see the bank - founded in 1695 and the oldest surviving commercial bank in the UK - become a separate company again and, its backers hope, ensure the survival of thousands of jobs in Scotland.
Neil, an economist and a member of the Scottish Parliament's finance committee, admitted it would be a "challenge" but said it was worth finding out if there was a willingness to "do the necessary to put a bid together".
Spowart said it was unthinkable to do nothing while the bank in effect went out of existence.
"It is vital that we do something positive. We can't just sit back and watch the Bank of Scotland disappear."
The Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, accused the British Government of doing just that.
"No country can insulate itself from mergers and takeovers, but very few countries would so idly stand by and allow their oldest, key financial institution to be left in the position that HBOS was left in last week," he said.
- INDEPENDENT
