When they have a moment to lift their eyes from their immediate troubles, bankers at rest enjoy nothing better than discussing how differently the joint buyers of ABN Amro are already emerging from that vast and controversial deal.

While Sir Fred Goodwin at Royal Bank of Scotland eyes the wreckage - £30 billion wiped from his market capitalisation since March – his partner in the break-up bid, Emilio BotÍn, of Banco Santander, is smiling.

Sir Fred missed out on the prize he really wanted, ABN’s American offshoot LaSalle, and had to make do with the consolation prize of the London wholesale bank and a few promising bits and pieces in Asia. Market worries that RBS’s large securitisation operation in the US can’t have escaped the sub-prime debacle have added to his woes.

By contrast, Mr BotÍn not only got what he wanted from the ABN deal, the Dutch bank’s fast-growing Brazilian jewel, he also picked up ABN’s Italian operation, Banca Antonveneta. That might not have looked exciting, but it proved a gem, when he sold it this week to Monte dei Paschi di Siena for a notional capital gain of about £2.4 billion. It was the kind of “flip” that the most opportunistic of private equity players would have been proud of.

While RBS shareholders have lostI two fifths of their money this year, Santander shareholders have never had it so good, the shares hitting a record high this month.

That is great news for the army of 1.3 million small UK shareholders, who received Santander shares when it bought the old Abbey National in 2004. They have now made paper gains of 60 per cent since the takeover (though the sceptics argue it may not last, singling out Spain as looking particularly vulnerable to its own banking crisis.)

The news from the company behind one of Britain’s other most widely held shares has been far less satisfactory in recent months. Standard Life shares have been nosediving and fell another 10p to 243¾p yesterday. They have now reversed almost all the strong gains they made since the flotation at 230p in the summer of 2006.

That is partly caused by the problems of the overall share market, which has a disproportionate effect on life assurers. But it is also down to Standard’s unpopular decision to abandon organic growth and join the battle for Resolution. Small investors have lost an average £1,500 in the past three months.

The market giveth and the market taketh away, as any Sid knows.

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