We may get an interesting development on Friday where SJ and 92 Foundation publicly pull out or The Glazers through Raine state that either SJ or SJR is the preferred bidder and they are looking to conclude the merger takeover within 6 weeks. To be clear here SJR proposal will take at least 12 weeks to complete taking us to the middle of September at best. We may even find that SJ ups his offer from £5.2bn to £5.4bn for a quick completion as a sweetener, this may be why he said The Glazers and Raine have until Friday to discuss offers with him!
I do think that the fact that no preferred bidder has been declared yet means that this is much more of an open race than many outlets are reporting.
Several good points made here that some are overlooking based on the reports, or their own hatred of Qatar.
Keegan's exclusive article absolutely suggests the Qataris are flexible to negotiating and potentially offering more, but they've had enough of the dallying by the Raine and the Glazers, and without an ultimatum like this, there is no ballpark established for what a "winning" bid will be valued at, nor is there any end in sight to this process.
They know their structure is significantly less complex and, in theory, if they hit the right number (which I do not believe is truly £6B), all 6 siblings can agree to sell now. The lack of cohesion between the 6 siblings is quite apparent at this point and the Financial Times piece simply shone a light on this.