From SEC 14D9 filling
My take:
- Why Raine kept the line of representative of SJ opened and even exchanged drafts of agreement, if you had strong doubt of their financial capability?
- I think the SJ camp did hand in documents regarding their financing commitment, but it could be *doggy* and not meeting the requirement in Raine's POV, thus "sufficient evidence of the financing and customary financing commitment papers". Both Raine and SJ camp didn't lie about the financing commitment.
- Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,2023.
A reasonable take though I think you are overthinking it with the political angle.
A pledge from a bank, if provided, might not meet "
sufficient evidence of the financing and
customary financing commitment papers", if that pledge was opaque wrt how the that pledge was underwritten- where were the supporting funds coming from and from whom? Could be an issue of funders rather than funding. The Qatar group were repeatedly warned that their bids lacked proof of funding so they had plenty of opportunity to be compliant. No excuses really.
The other thing I would note, and I don't think it has been mentioned, is that Qatar's last bid was pretty desperate and incredibly dumb. Desperate, in the sense that it hardly moved the needle in terms of overall equity valuation and dumb in that It was a bid that had to be summarily rejected- the Glazers couldn't accept a bid that saw their lot improved at the expense of other shareholders. Qatar's previous rejected bid of $30 a share would be the basis of A shareholder's successful litigation against the BoD. A pointless bid that did not reflect a sophisticated approach.