Abbey National, which last week cold-shouldered a £9bn bid approach from Bank of Ireland, has quietly put its life and pensions business, Scottish Mutual, up for sale. Abbey’s finance director, Stephen Hester, is determined that the business should not be a drain on the mortgage bank.Last week Abbey agreed a deal to sell with-profits products from Prudential, a major rival to Scottish Mutual.A source close to Abbey pointed out that this deal ended any strategic reason for Abbey to own the pensions business. But Abbey’s official position is that the operation is still core and not up for sale.The bank bought Scottish Mutual 10 years ago for £285m and has since bought another small pensions business, Scottish Provident. The two could be bundled together if there was a good enough bid. But the markets are difficult and the only likely bidder is GE Capital, the giant US group.Abbey has also put its consumer credit side, First National, up for sale with a price tag of around £800m. As yet, there are no takers for it.Abbey is awaiting publication of Bank of Ireland’s bid approach, which the Irish bank has promised this week. The proposal is understood to include an all-share offer giving a dual-listed company headquartered in Dublin.Analysts have backed Abbey’s rejection of the approach and now say that Bank of Ireland is vulnerable to a bid from Royal Bank of Scotland.National Australia Bank, which has been a suitor for Abbey, has now turned its attentions to AMP, the troubled Australian life company that owns Pearl Assurance in the UK.

Two senior executives at AMP resigned last month after the group was forced to pump £500m into its UK business.Late last week Pearl’s credit rating was downgraded by AM Best, the insurance analyst. Best also downgraded Britannic Assurance and Royal London, as well as the UK life assurance subsidiaries of France’s Axa and Winterthur of Switzerland.Best said the downgrades had been prompted by further falls in the UK equity markets, which hit the capital reserves of the life companies.. Britain’s top advertiser has warned that it could desert ITV if the proposed merger between Carlton and Granada, the two main companies behind the channel, goes ahead. “If ITV were to merge, one would have to reconsider one’s options. I can use Channel 4, Channel 5 and satellite TV, and can do the job effectively.” However, he said, consumer products companies such as P&G are more restricted.

“The packaged goods market doesn’t have the same options,” he said.The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers said it had “grave concerns” about the merger but that Carlton and Granada had not yet discussed how it could alleviate the problem of the dominance in advertising sales.The Communications Bill, to be published in the next few weeks, is expected to allow the two companies to merge, and leave decisions on future mergers solely in the hands of competition authorities rather than ministers.A committee of MPs chaired by Lord Puttnam, the former film producer, recommended extra safeguards to protect the diversity of British media. This coming weekend the Irish people vote for the second time on the Nice treaty, the one that provides for EU enlargement. If they vote it down as they did before, then it may be possible for some new members to join, though things will look very difficult. But if they vote it through, and the polls point that way, up to another 10 countries seem likely to join. If these countries all decide to go ahead, this would add another 20 per cent to the EU’s population, bringing it to 452 million, and 23 per cent to its land area. But its GDP would rise by only 4.5 per cent – hence the question. For the EU gains not just a bigger market but a group of fast-growing, dynamic econo- mies that are still catching up with their neighbours to the west.