Hi PP, it makes "some" sense that an offer may arise eventually,...

Hi PP, it makes "some" sense that an offer may arise eventually, but the hard evidence isn't there to back it up- just yet.

If there was even the slightest leak in the market place that an offer was pending within the next 6-12 months no amount of capping would prevent FKP closing the gap on it's NTA. After all, we are talking about a 60% rise needed to close the gap. No insto selling into an offer would leave that much of a discrepancy on the table, especially considering FKP's other valuable assets.

When you also consider that the market is fully aware that an offer may be forthcoming eventually, I think it would be very difficult to keep a pending offer secret for too long.

When you say it is being capped, you just have to look at the low volumes to see that buying interest is not there and what you say is capping is more like instos reducing their holding but trying to hold the price up at the same time because of the lack of buying interest at the moment. Like the rest of the market, it has had a big run too (although belated), and needs a breather, no matter how cheap it may still appear.

Mulpha owns a substantial part of FKP and I imagine, even though they may not want the retirement business themselves, they would not be interested in selling the retirement assets at anything less than close to what they are worth, ie. their NTA value at least.

Because the retirement sector is showing growing demend as you point out, then a premium for those assets would be sought by Mulpha.
In contrast, SGP doesn't hold the same bargaining power and would be forced to pay a reasonable sum to buy the retirement business.

So summing up, my view is that SGP would need to pay a substantial premium on top of the current shareprice to have any chance. And, if in fact SGP was about to make a substantial offer of 40%, 50% or even 60% above the current shareprice, then the news would have leaked and no amount of capping would stem the buying demand.

So, while it's a nice story, I can't see it happening in the short term- not yet anyway.