Boycott needed

As you will doubtless know, CVC's bid for Betfair was announced at £8.80 this morning. It seems to me, with the very obvious caveat that I know nothing about the process behind this stuff, that it is a curious level at which to have bid. The price was £6.90 a week ago last Friday, so you'd be right to argue that it's a long way up from there. But if you've got to get the long-term shareholders to sell, and they've held on all this time (from the £8.70 that it was at the end of the lock-up, through the horrid period where it seemed to be heading for zero, back up to £9  year ago) - they're surely aren't going to go for a number that doesn't even offer them a 13-month high, are they? They could have sold above that price at any time over a 2-month period from 1st Feb 2012. If they had lost faith in the company after its price had plunged from a high of £16 down to a low of £5.71, wouldn't they have done it then? Why would they want to be getting out at that level now that 650-heads-worth of costs have been taken out? There would have been a frisson of excitement among some shareholders if they'd pitched it in the corridor of uncertainty this morning. But £8.80 is a leg-side long-hop: too easy for the Board to dispatch. If they don't hit it out of the park, serious questions should be asked. My guess is that the bidders will be back after the publication of Betfair's defence on 7th May with a higher offer. They'll have warmed up by then, and I'd bet that the second time, it'll be a perfect length ball, just around off stump - perhaps with a bit of out-swing. Much trickier to know how to play.