Mr. John Collison:

At the risk of repeating myself, Lazard was aware on 13 February that flexibility had been provided. It was told that if there were others that fitted the profile, they could be invited into the process. There was an opportunity to do this. Between 4 and 14 February, a number of bidders were approached, but others subsequently came forward. We asked Lazard for an assessment, based on what we were trying to achieve, of whether these investors would be the right fit and if they had the required financial capacity and so forth. For a number of reasons, two were accepted but others were not. We acted on instructions and the advice of our loan and sales adviser at the time. It should be borne in mind - again, I do not want to be argumentative about this - that we sat down initially with the original bidders that had been approached. We told them that this was a bespoke process and that a limited number of parties would be invited to participate. That was the message they were given and why they had been invited into the process. It was not the case that we could have taken a completely different approach at that stage.