There's $4.75 cold hard cash on the table. Often with a TO...

There's $4.75 cold hard cash on the table. Often with a TO there's a component in cash and some in shares from the acquiring company. You are being offered $4.75 to hit the road.

The board has approved and recommended this offer and will appoint an advisor to tell you that $4.75 is fair price and you are not being ripped off and that really you are lucky to have such a diligent board to have found you a nice PE firm who are prepared to pay so much for little old us. Never mind you are trading at 3 year lows and the share price has been methodically pushed down for over a year.

Then you get to vote for the scheme of arrangement so if you want your $4.75 and no one else turns up to the party to offer more, we all agree that Baring Asia are great chaps and just the sort of people we'd like to send us a cheque for $4.75 as soon as possible.

Along the way, the company has to get Foreign Investment Review Board approval and turn up in court a few times. All going well you'll get your money in time for the Christmas turkey.

Until November the sp will trade at a discount to the bid because you know the ceiling is $4.75 so at the moment the discount is $0.13. If someone else comes along to sniff around the price will start to go up if there's some confidence of a competitor bidding.

The only other possible buyers in my view are other PE firms because the company has essentially done a lousy job of getting synergies and extracting efficiency from all their parts and it is probably one of the few businesses which is worth more in pieces than it is in tact.

So in short, I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if anyone else turns up with a better bid and then see how far they have managed to depress the on market price to decide if I just sell on market or wait for the payout in December.

PS Be nice to the Christmas turkey, it probably a fellow SAI holder.