Jim Armitage: What to do with Scottish Widows?

When it comes to topsy-turvy City gossip, the speculation swirling around Lloyds’ Scottish Widows insurance arm and Standard Life-Aberdeen seems the topsiest-turviest yet.

The recent word has been that, after the £11 billion merger of the Scottish fund giants next month, Lloyds would sell Widows to them and return the proceeds to shareholders.

After all, the speculation went, Lloyds’ shareholders want to own a bank, not an insurer.

The theory was given legs because Standard Aberdeen already knows Widows well: Aberdeen has been managing the Widows’ £130 billion of funds since the pair struck a partnership in 2013.

In fact, ScotWids’ cash makes up around a third of Aberdeen’s funds under management. Standard Life and Aberdeen have done little to dispel the gossip. But it always seemed a bonkers theory.

Firstly, investors approved of the Standard-Aberdeen merger as it creates a bigger fund manager, not so the combined business could hose cash around buying pensions and savings businesses.

Secondly, Lloyds has never shown an interest in selling its insurance business before. Far from it: not so long ago chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio promoted Widows boss Antonio Lorenzo to run Lloyds’ entire insurance operation. Lorenzo is viewed as a star in the bank.

Why would H-O waste him on a division he wants to shrink? If anything, Lloyds is more likely to buy Standard Life’s insurance business than the other way around.

The whole Widows issue will come to a head in the not-too-distant future. H-O had the right to terminate Widows’ fund management deal with Aberdeen when it merged with Standard Life.

He chose not to, opting to suck it and see for six months.

So, all sides will sit around a table in February and review what to do with these billions of pounds-worth of our insurance savings.

Those talks will not see Lloyds selling Widows. Horta-Osorio should do its 3000 unsettled staff a favour and put the rumour to bed.

Another day, another monster payment-processing takeover.

As companies get more online and global, they need to be able to take customers’ cash seamlessly online, offline and across all countries. And they want to be able to do it through as few payment processors as possible.