Jim Armitage: Standard Life Aberdeen's Martin Gilbert plays a winning hand to hush critics

Standard Life CEO (right) and Martin Gilbert, Aberdeen Asset Management CEO, after the two companies agreed the terms of the merger in 2017: PA

Art of the deal rule one: don’t underestimate Martin Gilbert. Last week, he was getting brickbats for losing Lloyds’ £109 billion Scottish Widows funds. Now we learn that, all along, he had a bigger play elsewhere. It’s that moment in the casino where the apparently drunk hick puts down his glass, stops slurring, and lays out a royal flush.

Let’s rewind: Lloyds was narked when Gilbert’s Aberdeen merged with Standard Life. So would you be: Lloyds’ Scottish Widows was Aberdeen’s biggest customer, yet here was Gilbert jumping in the sack with a direct competitor.

So Lloyds offered a deal: sell us Standard Life’s pensions book and we’ll let you keep our business. Fine in principle, but with devils in the detail. Lloyds proposed pooling their pensions into a 60:40 venture for five years. For Gilbert, it felt messy. If we’re getting out of pensions, they figured, let’s do it cleanly — not locked into a venture where Lloyds has all the control.

Thanks to his chairman Sir Gerry Grimstone, a get-out beckoned. Four years ago, Standard Life bought Phoenix’s Ignis fund manager. Grimstone and Phoenix’s Clive Bannister got on.

Time to talk again. Today they emerge with a deal bringing Gilbert a clean exit and a guarantee that Standard will keep managing Phoenix’s £200 billion funds for years to come. Some quibble at the price: Swiss Re paid 20% more for L&G’s similar business. But there’s a bigger logic. From its messy mega-merger of pensions and asset management, Standard emerges as a pure, zero conflict of interest fund manager.

Who knows? It may even win back some of the Scottish Widows’ money. Clever.