Dispute as mooted 950p-a-share Betfair deal falls over But Betfair bridles at that, claiming the real reason is far more complex, as its statement to the Stock Exchange implied. It said that, during Monday's discussions, "it became clear that it would not be possible to agree the terms of any proposal in conjunction with a business plan that was deliverable." CVC's proposal, claim Betfair sources, was wholly reliant on poaching Corcoran and his team, as it had failed to line up any management of its own. It wanted Corcoran to back a business plan that was so far removed from the one that the new Betfair boss had presented only a few days earlier as part of the group's defence that he would have been unable to have done it with a straight face. "CVC had a cloud cuckoo plan and no management," claimed one insider. The private equity firm, which typically tries to work with existing management, would disagree with that. But there were strategic differences. The CVC plan was partly penned by Koch, a long-term advocate of keeping the exchange - built on peer-to-peer betting - the absolute centre of the business. Koch has been dubbed an "exchange evangelist," like ex-Betfair managing director Mark Davies, who in a recent blog cautioned against the group becoming a conventional "me-too" gambling company. Alongside that, the CVC plan called for a focus on cash margins and a cut in customer numbers, concentrating on the big fish not the minnows. That allowed the marketing budget to be slashed from a historic £90m-£100m a year to £20m as Betfair stopped chasing tiddlers only interested in £10 free bets. By contrast Corcoran, who joined from Paddy Power last August, has put Betfair's new sportsbook - offering similar fixed-odds wagers to other bookies - at the centre of his strategy. He sees Betfair's unique proposition as the interplay of the exchange and the sportsbook, highlighting how it helped drive an 18pc rise in customers in the past six months, with 24pc of football punters now betting on both. "I'm paid to drive shareholder value not to pay homage to the exchange," Corcoran declared tellingly last week. He's also earmarking an extra £10m of cost savings he's found for marketing. Even so, sources close to CVC claim the strategic differences are not as big as Betfair suggests. "All they are trying to do is deflect attention from the fact that they turned down 950p," said one. Indeed, even with the shares dropping just 30 to 865p yesterday, some big shareholders are livid. Half the shares are owned by investors from before 2010"s disastrous £13-a-share float. Many, thought to include Japan's Softbank and co-founder Andrew Black, with around 7pc, were happy to back CVC at £9.50 or less because it planned to allow them to roll over their investment and benefit from any upside. Protecting Corcoran from the bid fall-out is also a key motivation of the Betfair board. Last week he admitted that, thanks to the bid, "we are showing a bit more leg than we might have like to." Now he has 950p to shoot for, you hope he's not already shown too much.