It seems unlikely Temasek would want to buy the whole bank, but if the price is right, who is Mr Davies to object? The Singaporeans may not be able to rely on such a friendly reception at AB Ports, which judging by the body language is shaping up to reject any offer pitched at 740p a share or less. This is roughly double where the shares were a year ago, and so far ahead of the 230p a share offered by Guy Hands back in 2000 that you'd think it was a completely different company. At 740p, the exit multiple also isn't so very different from the one P&O was recently sold for. In theory, P&O should be worth more, since it has had a genuinely global footprint and was the subject of a takeover battle by rivals, so surely 740p ought to be enough to do the trick at AB Ports. Not so fast, says AB Ports: we've proportionately got a lot more property than P&O and our growth prospects are just as good Even two years ago, nobody would have listened. Shareholders would have bitten the consortium's hand off to accept.

It is symptomatic of how much things have changed that today the consortium is by no means assured of success at this price. Looking at the make-up of the consortium ­ all essentially pension fund investors looking for appropriate infrastructure investments to fund their long term liabilities ­ shareholders need to ask themselves a basic question: if these pension fund investors are prepared to pay so handsomely for port assets, with all the fees the infrastructure fund managers will take out along the way charged on top, then perhaps they might be worth keeping for themselves. Not that the "Project Admiral" bidders and their like should be discouraged. If nothing else, the wave of private equity bids we've seen in the stock market over the past three years has helped highlight its underlying value, as well as galvanise managements into more aggressive use of their balance sheets. This in turn has helped drive the spectacular returns we have seen from UK equities these past few years Long may it last.

The City: a thing to be left well alone When something is already a rip roaring success, it might seem best just to leave well alone. Yet the Chancellor cannot resist the temptation to tinker and, with this in mind, he's setting up a task force together with representatives of the financial services industry to ensure that the City, now indisputably the world's largest centre for international financial services, remains at the top of its game. This is an extraordinarily bad idea, or at least, it would be if the intention is anything other than that of stopping the Government from doing anything stupid. Since when was that ever the purpose of Government committee? The City has to date thrived regardless of the Government, or even despite it. Any attempt through public policy to bolster London's position as a financial centre would almost certainly end in tears.