The limited lexicon for hostile deals in China has acquired a new phrase: put up or shut up. Hong Kong regulators will not grant ENN Energy and Sinopec, the suitors, much longer for their eight-months-and-counting offer for China Gas. Hurrah for that. Some deals are complex. The only thing worthy of that tag in this one – the first hostile bid by a state-owned enterprise for a private Chinese company – is the manner in which it has limped on.

The answer is a clearer timetable. Hopefully a precedent has been set by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission imposing a definitive deadline for the first time. It is not quite the UK’s famed “put up or shut up” so much as “you will be asked to put up eventually” but it is progress. ENN and Sinopec first surprised China Gas with a pre-conditional offer of HK$3.50 a share in December. The precondition was getting the nod from the Ministry of Commerce (MofCom), which has still not opined. The chances of ENN and Sinopec succeeding if they do push ahead by the mid-October deadline seem remote. China Gas’s shares are trading at a 20 per cent premium to the offer. The target and its friends – Korea’s SK Group, London’s Fortune Oil – also now control 53 per cent. Breaking them apart will involve a far higher offer – Beijing Enterprises, another SOE, now holds a fifth and bought in above HK$4. Shares in ENN, which has paid out nearly Rmb100m in bridging credit fees and interest expenses for this non-deal deal, also risks its investment grade rating should it succeed.