No one who visits the Royal Bank of Scotland’s new headquarters on the outskirts of Edinburgh can fail to be impressed by its grandeur.

Set in 40 hectares of landscaped woodland, the £350 million sandstone-and-glass complex boasts 93,000 sq metres of office space for 3,250 staff, accessed through a vast atrium where columns stand more than 15 metres high. A tree-lined “street” includes a super-market, florist and hairdresser, while other facilities include a 500-seat terrace restaurant, five-a-side football pitches, dance and aerobic studios and even running and cycling tracks. As a statement of intent, the Gogarburn complex speaks volumes about the health of Scotland’s financial services market.

It is more than 300 years since Scotland planted its flag on the map of world banking, with the founding, ironically, of the Bank of England by Wil-liam Paterson, a Scotsman, in 1694, followed a year later by the formation of the Bank of Scotland.

Three centuries after the stereotype of the thrifty Scot was set in stone, the industry has never been in better shape. Scotland boasts the headquarters of two of the world’s top ten banks, making Edinburgh the UK’s second financial centre after the City of London.

The financial services sector accounts for £7 billion, roughly 7 per cent of Scotland’s gross domestic product, and is the largest private sector employer, employing 210,000 people both directly and indirectly, or one in ten of the total workforce. More than £700 billion of funds are managed by Scottish companies; 55 per cent of all insured pensions business in the UK is written from Scotland.

Walk down any street in Edinburgh’s 18th century New Town and you are likely to bump into sharp-suited fund managers with polished English accents stepping out of their 4x4s. It is only six years ago that the city’s first £1 million property was sold; last year alone there were about 80.

In a further sign of Scotland’s booming financial services, the first daily direct flights between Edinburgh and Zurich, another of Europe’s financial capitals, started last week.

But there are uncertain times ahead. According to a series of opinion polls, the proin-dependence Scottish National Party (SNP) is on course for an historic victory at elections to the Scottish Parliament on May 3.

Although it will have to find a coalition partner in order to form a government and may yet have to compromise on some of its policies, the SNP says that it will not be swayed from its commitment to a referendum on independence.

Such is the anxiety in Labour circles that Tony Blair last month urged Scots to wake up to the dangers of the SNP before it was too late, and said that Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, was guilty of peddling “ignorant” arguments on independence. He reserved his greatest contempt, however, for Sir George Mathewson, the RBS’s former chairman, accusing him of “pure self-indul-gence” for publicly declaring his support for the SNP.

Although in the past the SNP has suffered a credibility problem over its economic policies, the endorsement by Sir George, a blue-chip Edinburgh banker of the highest calibre, has made the Nationalists far more palatable to the business community. In a letter to The Scotsman, Sir George, 66, who retired from RBS last year, said that independence might allow Scotland finally to escape its “dependency culture”.

Other figures from the financial services community to throw their weight behind Mr Salmond include Ben Thomson, chairman of the Noble Group, the Edinburgh-based investment bank. He said that independence could create “a more attractive environment for business” in Scotland: “I’m not at all afraid of fiscal autonomy or independence.”

Mr Salmond, himself a former RBS economist, has gone out of his way to make himself more plausible to the business community. He has repeatedly stressed the importance of the financial services sector which, even more than oil, remains the jewel in the crown of Scotland’s economy.

Although many of the SNP’s economic policies remain vague, they include reducing corporation tax to 20 per cent and “lightening the burden of regulation” on financial services companies. For the moment, Scotland would stick with sterling but a change to the euro would be considered in the future.

Mr Salmond told The Times: “We are pledging a light-touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector with its outstanding reputation for probity, as opposed to one like that in the UK, which absorbs huge amounts of management time in ‘gold-plated’ regulation.”

However, not everybody is convinced. A straw poll by The Times of Scotland’s biggest financial services companies revealed that a majority have deep reservations about the uncertainty that would follow an SNP victory on May 3, as well as possible changes to tax and regulatory regimes.

Although Amanda Harvie, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise, the industry body for Scotland’s financial services sector, is keen to stress her organisation’s political neutrality, she admits that there may be nervous times ahead.

Picking her words carefully, she said: “Business likes transparency, stability and certainty so that it can make long-term investment decisions.

“If Scotland isn’t able to provide the quality of business environment that the industry needs to compete around the world then investment will go from Scotland.”

With most financial services groups in Scotland depending on a client base south of the border, and further afield, for their business, the May 3 election is likely to attract considerable scrutiny.

David Lonsdale, assistant director of the CBI in Scotland, said that the onus was on the SNP to provide greater clarity about its policies on tax and regulation. “It’s incumbent upon the SNP and others to put forward its case and to convince people that the business climate would be conducive should it be elected to office.”

However, Sandy Nairn, chief executive of Edinburgh Partners, an independent fund management group with more than £2 billion under management, said that he failed to see how changes in regulation would affect his business.

He said: “We have an onerous regulatory regime as it is and we always will have, so from that respect I don’t see how things would be very different. Multiple regulatory regimes are something we deal with as a matter of course.”

Among the most sanguine views is that of Peter Lyell, a veteran of Scotland’s property market and head of Edinburgh residential sales at Savills, the estate agent. Mr Lyell, who has seen property prices in Edinburgh soar by up to 200 per cent over the past ten years, said: “The banks bring up pretty highflying people. It’s not uncommon for them to turn up from the South of England with millions in their pocket.”

He added: “I think there would have to be something really drastic for the market to collapse, like a sudden exodus of the big financial institutions.

“People might take stock for a while if the SNP win, but I doubt there would be much more than that. An independent Scotland doesn’t mean that the country is suddenly going to float off into the Atlantic.”

Financial hub

–– Between 2000 and 2005 Scotland’s financial services sector grew by 36 per cent, compared with 15 per cent for the UK sector as a whole and an overall rate of 9 per cent for the Scottish economy

–– Scotland boasts the headquarters of two of the world’s top ten banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland

–– The financial services sector is worth £7 billion — roughly 7 per cent — of Scotland’s gross domestic product

–– The industry accounts for 10 per cent of Scottish jobs, employing 110,000 directly and a further 100,000 in support services

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