If this works, look out. Lenovo thinks the server business it is set to buy from IBM – it hopes to close by the end of this year – will be a $5bn business “with higher margins than PCs,” within 12 months. Lenovo’s personal computer business probably has an operating margin of about three per cent. If Lenovo can squeeze five per cent out of servers, that is $250m of operating income, a bump of almost a quarter over what Lenovo earns now. For this, the company paid IBM $2.3bn in cash and stock.

This arithmetic encapsulates the appeal of Lenovo’s shares. The list of big companies that can pay under 10 times earnings for an acquisition, have earnings rise and margins expand (and still carry no debt) is short. The idea of a lean scavenger that can take such nourishment from businesses cast off by fat technology conglomerates is a capitalist’s delight. And Lenovo pulled this trick once before, buying IBM’s PC business in 2004. It now manufactures more PC’s than anyone and makes good money doing it.

The deal is not done yet, though. It is worth remembering that the PC deal did not come off with perfect smoothness; one executive likened it to an organ donation that almost failed. Recall, also, that free cash flow fell in the two years after that deal, and did not regain its pre-deal peak until 2012 (this reflects in part the general tenuousness of the PC business and the intervening recession, but it is instructive all the same). And Lenovo will be integrating the Motorola handset business, bought from Google, at the same time. This will be tricky.