What was Dermot Desmond up to in his purchase of 10 per cent of Powerscreen and the rapid sale thereafter of a stake of more than 9 per cent. Clearly, something did not quite work out to plan, as there is no evidence of any share price move over the past week or so that would indicate that a quick profit was made on the purchase and sale. And the fact that they were notified together to Powerscreen, suggests that the purchase and sale happened in short order, with no more than 24 hours between them.

What appears to have happened is that Mr Desmond was attempting to build a stake of a size, which would have been enough to either make it difficult for Terex to take over Powerscreen - or even to form a basis on which Mr Desmond could bid for control. For a bid to go unconditional, of course, the bidder needs to get control of more than 80 per cent and it may have been that, having failed to attain a shareholding of this size, the Desmond company sold out. Powerscreen's shareholding is widely spread, many of the bigger investors having sold out, so building a sizeable stake would be no easy task. One way or another it appears that Dermot Desmond saw some value in the share and believed that with its balance sheet now cleaned up, it was worth more than the 190 pence sterling a share being offered by Terex.