Shaun Ler: So, we believe it's more likely than not Perpetual will successfully acquire Pendal, and we at present don't expect Perpetual to be bought over by someone else. I guess, there are a few reasons on that.

Number one – if we look at since when Regal and the private equity consortium came with a bid for Perpetual, both Perpetual and Pendal continued to remain committed to the acquisition. You can see it from their language. You can see it from their leases. They've recently, sort of, revised the terms of the scheme a bit. So, I think that suggests that they are willing to compromise and that suggests that they're trying to appeal to shareholders.

And the second thing is that if you look at what price the board has rejected the Regal's offer, firstly, they rejected it at $30, they subsequently rejected it at $33, and also across the street, you been hearing analysts, commentators saying that the bid for Perpetual needs to be materially higher. The media is reporting valuation expectations all the way from $40 to $50. And our fair value for Perpetual as it stands is also $39.50. So, the price tag for Perpetual is pretty high and that could deter someone from trying to buy it at a very cheap price.

And the last thing is that Pendal can actually seek remedy if Perpetual walks away, which means that if you as a bidder for Perpetual, and you subsequently buy Perpetual, you will need to contain with some potential headaches, for example, potential compensation to Pendal. Or if Pendal has to stick together with Perpetual and all the sudden, you are not buying one company, you're buying two companies, and you've got to take on a huge integration risk.

But although this deal, we believe, it's more likely than not to go through, it doesn't mean that it's value accretive for Perpetual shareholders over the longer term. I mean, if you look at Paul Skamvougeras' departure and the potential for further staff dissatisfaction is precisely why we think the merger will not be value accretive. Because apart from just ripping out duplicate costs, you've also got to think about whether or not your key (investors) are happy and how do you retain them, to make sure that the client doesn't walk away as well. And if they leave, that's the risk for the clients to jump ship as well. So, Perpetual will need to incentivize these guys to stay through various monetary measures, and all of this means that there might be new retention agreements or potentially even mandate redemptions that were previously not factored into its old synergy target.