@col69 You exerpted a whole sentence I'd written faithfully but...

@col69 You exerpted a whole sentence I'd written faithfully but then your bolding suggests you still read out the words "without having to rely" etc. Then you ended with a question. Then A rolling eye emoji like I'd said something dumb. I'm trying to understand and to help you understand.

Today I checked Rio's market cap - it was around 38 billion dollars. 770 million dollars is around 2% of even Rio's market cap. Even wealthy companies don't just have massive amounts sitting around in cash. So I just checked Rios annual report from february. They had 10.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents as per note 21 to the financial statements but only around 740 million in cash. Since then I know they've paid dividends in april and I also noted they've announced a new senior legal council for the group.

I stand by my statement as written and as you excerpted it but your bolding suggests you read me out of context.

Even wealthy RIO won't treat 770 million (and note that is to match not beat - they have to beat WES to be a superior proposal - its likely to require an amount closer to a billion dollars if they want to substantially beat) as just throwing around money. There would be checks and balances internally for that amount. Which means they'd be wanting to see business cases etc - new legal (who may not have been around to see KDR confidential info before 1 July) people included. Now those business cases probably would have been compiled using KDR confidential info from the time when the data room was not closed. And as I pointed out in post # 39616517 - KDR will have required Rio to destroy or return confidential info on KDR.