As the world woke up to the news of Lloyds TSB merging with HBOS, the North West corporate finance community began to digest the implications for deals in a market in which Lloyds’ private equity arm, LDC, and the Bank of Scotland’s integrated finance (BOSIF) teams could find themselves working side by side. One regional banking heavyweight told Insider: “What Lloyds’ view of the IF offer will be, no one knows. It sucks up a lot of capital and BOSIF have quite a lot of assets on their books that have not been sold down.” “There is certainly a question mark over whether the new owners will want to keep two such large private equity businesses in the long term,” said Grant Thornton corporate finance partner Ali Sharifi. But neither team has been very active in recent months because of the state of the banking market and Andrew Curwen, partner at law firm Gorvins in Stockport, said: “The interesting challenge will be how it will impact on the debt side. I would be surprised if a Lloyds corporate banker will be rushing to complete the transactions he’s got on.” While the market is watching and waiting, deals will get through. Corporate finance director John Gillibrand from Tenon in Bolton said: “It’s going to be three months before they’ve even done the deal and both banks have still got to run their businesses in the meantime.”