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It's quite a good time to be picking up some good deals in corporate fire sales.

And pretty much everyone is agreed that more should be done to encourage competition in the banking sector. So why not buy a bank?

It seems there's one for sale - Standard Life Bank - even though it doesn't have the look of a fire sale and it won't expand competition much if it merely means more consolidation.

It also seems that Standard Life is not far off closing the deal on separating its bank subsidiary out of the Edinburgh insurance giant.

Eleven years since being set up by former chief executive Scott Bell, and employing more than 250 people in the Scottish capital, it's been running down what was a modestly-sized mortgage book over recent months and concentrating more on savings.

The key is that the bank is not seen as core to what Standard Life does, and is a throw-back to the days when it didn't have shareholders asking awkward questions about core strategy.

Barclays is reported as the front-runner, with the price put somewhere between £200m and £300m.

This strategy is being linked with David Nish, the group finance director.

And that may be significant, as he's also one of the two internal front-runners to become next chief executive.

On the other hand, this strategy could be seen as having odd timing about it, when a successor to Sir Sandy Crombie is yet to be named.

But yet more market rumour has it chairman Gerry Grimstone is very close to making the announcement on the new boss on Lothian Road.