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Analysts said it would have to pay between £1bn and £1.2bn for Scottish Life, which has £10bn in assets under management. Last week, Abbey National agreed to pay £1.6bn for Scottish Provident.The speculation has led to a sharp rise in inquiries about Scottish Life's with-profits policies - the type that yield a windfall payment in the event of demutualisation. A Scottish Life spokesman said: "It would be naive to think that these people are not keen to cash in on windfalls and the level of inquiries has got to the stage of disrupting our normal business."The measures, which were effective from Monday evening, mean that any new policyholder will not receive a windfall.Scottish Life said that mutuality may not be the best future option. The spokesman said: "We are not intractably wedded to mutuality. There could well be situations either at the present time or going forward that would make it sensible to convert [to a public company].". By Roger Trapp By Roger Trapp 13 September 2000As a former university boxer Graham Ward knows a thing or two about bruising encounters. But the president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales will need to come up with a special punch for today's bout with the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York.The venue - one of the city's college campuses - is not exactly Madison Square Gardens, so Mr Ward will have to balance his heavyweight instincts with his famous charm, and the fast footwork of a flyweight.
But, equally, he cannot afford not to make clear his opposition to the mighty US financial regulator's proposal to force accounting firms to stop providing their audit clients with consulting services.His few minutes of testimony will constitute only a small part of a lengthy inquiry that has some time to run But the stakes are high. At issue is the future of the world of accountancy as we know it today.On the face of it, the SEC is seeking a sharp divide between audit and consultancy work. But leading accountants say the proposed rulings would also prohibit the big firms from providing services in such areas as internal audit, actuarial services, legal services and even providing expert witnesses.Mr Ward is more aware of the ramifications than most. His own firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, is on the verge of selling its consulting business to the computer company Hewlett-Packard for £10bn to £15bn.
Such a move, if successful, would follows similar steps by other Big Five firms. Ernst & Young has sold its consulting arm to Cap Gemini and KPMG has sold a 20-per-cent stake in its US consultancy practice to Cisco Systems while also applying to float the business.And PwC is felt to have helped cause the situation because a US investigation several months ago found thousands of violations by its partners of the rules governing ownership of shares in audit clients.Mr Ward is too much of a diplomat to be drawn into personalities. Instead, he says, he will be using his appearance at the hearings to state "the virtues of the framework approach". By this, he means that Britain and other European countries operate a regulatory regime on the basis of principles rather than rules. He will say this is more workable and more likely to win support. He also claims such an approach is "transportable" because it can reflect conditions in different countries rather than being applied unilaterally.But many in the accounting profession talk darkly of the matter being something of a crusade by the SEC's chairman, Arthur Levitt.