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You'd be forgiven for looking at the Lloyds half-year results, and concluding that no Scot should ever again be given access to a Bank of Scotland cheque book with which to make corporate loans.

The Edinburgh bank's legacy for its new owners is bad debt on an awesome scale. It makes you wonder at those who thought HBOS could remain independent.

But it seems some are already getting out from under that shadow.

I'm told there are two factors underlying the interims which look like good news for Scotland.

One: Lloyds fund management arm is set to expand at its Edinburgh headquarters.

And two: there's an intention to get back to lending to Scottish business.

For the 442 people who work at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) - 400 of them in Edinburgh's west end - the news that they are not only to stay with Lloyds, but also to expand asset management, ends months of uncertainty.

Having previously been with Lloyds TSB, the uncertainty came from duplication with Insight Investment, based in London and built up since 2002 by HBOS.

Both were doing much the same thing. By the end of June, Insight had £122bn under management, the seventh biggest in Britain, according to the Investment Management Association. SWIP, by that point, was managing £83bn, in ninth position.

The bosses at Lloyds had toyed with putting the two together. But facing pressure to raise capital and not to become too large, it decided to sell one.

I'm told SWIP began as the favourite to go.

But it's now clear that Insight is about to be sold, as part of Lloyds' sale of £200 billion assets. There had been plans to announce the sale with the interim results, but the deal is not yet complete.

Expect it to close in the next few days.

What's not yet clear is how much of Insight will remain with Lloyds. Whatever the size of those funds, they are expected to be managed by SWIP from Edinburgh, and under the Scottish Widows brand.

The other part of the good news from Lloyds is that it's trying to expand its corporate lending in Scotland.

After Bank of Scotland Corporate division - headed by the uber-generous Peter Cummings - had splattered money around the economy, the realisation of its risk meant it slammed the brakes on lending towards the end of 2007.

That continued the case until earlier this year. With Government pressure on the banks it part-owns to get lending again, Bank of Scotland Corporate, now the north-of-the-border cousin of Lloyds Corporate, is trying to push loans out the door again.

Archie Kane, board level director responsible for Scotland and insurance, has been targeting medium-sized companies - with a turnover of the £1m to £15m range.

In the next six months, he wants to extend that "back in business" message to smaller and larger firms.

The claim is that it will be "on commercial terms", though that is open to interpretation. And there are figures in the Lloyds results that suggest its lending remains tight, as the business sector has been saying.

In any case, it'll have to go some to be "commercial" on the same basis as the Bank of Scotland Corporate of yesteryear.

Incidentally, the Lloyds half-yearly figures include an interesting section on the problems it faces from the European Commission.

There have been reports that it may be broken up or denied state aid under competition rules, but this concedes the extent of the risk to the bank's future plans:

"The aid given and proposed to be given by HM Treasury to the Group is subject to European state aid review.

"The outcome of this review is uncertain at this stage and may involve the imposition of conditions on the Group that may be materially adverse to its interests (including, for example, conditions as to restructuring), the prohibition of some or all of the aid, or a requirement that any aid received by the Group be repaid."

That's the worst case scenario. But Lloyds is getting quite used to them.