Dealing at the last chance saloon All the essential elements of the original deal stay, which give Billabong the funding it needs to survive. THE Takeovers Panel, Billabong and its suitor Altamont have combined to produce a sensible reworking of the win-win deal to give Billabong a future. Billabong and Altamont did so under direct threat of having their deal declared unacceptable by the Panel. All the essential elements of the original deal stay, which give Billabong the funding it needs to survive and Altamont control of the beachwear group. What goes are the bits that "locked up" Billabong for Altamont, as they would have rendered it just too punitively costly for Billabong shareholders to reject Altamont. In my opinion the Panel erred in concluding that those bits rendered the proposal unacceptable. And the Panel came close - but not close enough - to recognising its own error. The panel would have been exactly right if this deal had come out of nowhere - crucially, with no Billabong "back story." It would have "locked up" Billabong before anybody else had a chance to propose an alternative. But everyone has had every chance to propose deals to Billabong. Indeed, we've had two years of proposal after proposal - all of them, until this one, falling over; and each succeeding one at ever lower prices. Indeed, we started out with the Billabong board rejecting $3.30; and have ended with the acceptance of this one that "might" put a value of perhaps 40-50c on a Billabong share. After, crucially, the share price had dropped to just 13c. This was no lock-up. It was the last chance saloon. And frankly, the Panel allowed itself to be "gamed" by the hedge funds "trying it on." And it showed that it almost realised this, when it noted the "back story." That this deal was done in the context of Billabong's "urgent need for funds" and a "public sale/refinancing process over more than 12 months." While the Panel "took these factors . . . into account." But naively, not enough, as it should have sent the hedge funds packing with a simple instruction. You had your chance.