What does a football coach tell the staff of a corporate head office under siege from an unwanted takeover by one of the world's biggest companies?
If it is Keven Sheedy, as it was last week when he visited the headquarters of mining and forestry group North, the message is quite simple: keep your options open.
Sheedy should know. Because that is what the long-serving Essendon coach has done this year as he has guided the Bombers to an unbeaten winning run of 20 matches since the start of the Australian Football League season.
Insiders say his pep talk was an inspirational event for the 120 or so staff who face the loss of their jobs if the Rio bid succeeds.
And if the staff felt good about the talk, then they were pretty pleased on Friday morning when another option presented itself and the world's biggest mining group, Anglo-American, trumped Rio's $A2.8 billion cash offer with a $A3.1 billion bid of its own.
The Anglo offer is important for the staff because it probably means that at least some of them will get to keep a job if the bid succeeds. And it is important for North shareholders, too, because it means they will get more for their shares when the company is finally sold - as it inevitably must be - to one of the two protagonists.
Indeed, the battle for North is shaping up to be one of fiercest takeover brawls of the past few years. The AMP/GIO battle was brutal, but that was fought between a single bidder and a target company. The Rio/Anglo/North tussle is much more complex.
Rio is trying to find a solution to the shrinking margins of its Hamersley iron ore mines in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Last year, Rio and BHP - the two largest iron ore suppliers in the world - had extensive talks about merging their respective Pilbara operations - but the negotiations foundered because of a disagreement over price and opposition from Japanese trading houses Nippon, Mitsui and Sumitomo.
This year, Rio decided to try again, and sought to present the Japanese trading houses with a fait accompli by buying out North - their partner in Robe River Iron Associates.
The Japanese, however, are not amused. They have launched a fierce campaign against the bid, railing against it almost daily, despite repeated attempts by Rio to placate their anger.
It is the Japanese who will effectively deliver North into the hands of Rio. They have threatened to cut iron ore supply contracts with Rio and switch some of Rio's Australian coal supply contracts to other parties (read Anglo's Australian coal assets, which it recently bought from Shell).
The Japanese trading houses have also pledged their total support to Anglo's first move into the iron ore industry and promised to build a major alliance with the group, as well as share the cost of a new railway to be built to the West Angelas project in the Pilbara.
Rio may well be wondering if it has manoeuvred itself into a lose-lose situation. The potential cost savings it could have extracted from the merger of its iron ore operations with North - particularly by connecting the West Angelas rail link to its own - meant it had enormous leverage over the bid that no other party could match.
That advantage has been eroded with the action of the Japanese. And whether it beats off the Anglo bid or not, it is faced with antagonistic trading partners who have an influence over many of the commodities that Rio produces.
Rio might just find itself going back into the arms of BHP. If Anglo is to become a price-setter in iron ore negotiations with its new-found Japanese friends, Rio and BHP will find themselves down a mineshaft without a conveyor belt. Price may no longer be such a sticky option, and upsetting the Japanese will no longer be an issue.
What Rio needs most at the moment is to consider its options. It has hired some of the world's best merchant bankers, lawyers and spin doctors to advise it. Perhaps they should go and ask Sheedy what to do.
* Giles Parkinson is deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
<i>Sydney view:</i> Takeover target told to keep options open
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