On Tuesday, Mr North explained why his company was so keen to reject Mr Osmond's �5.5bn bid for the pub and hotel chain.

[Hugh Osmond] is offering to acquire our company with a shell company, which has minimal assets.

They are offering no experience or expertise in running hotels Richard North

He is offering our shareholders 98% of their own company.

He is seeking to borrow against our shareholders' assets to actually give them their cash back.

And in return they are offering no experience or expertise in running hotels.

And I would expect our shareholders to be extremely concerned about that lack of experience and expertise.

There is no suggestion in their proposal, there is no information as to who is going to run the hotel business.

Of course, [the shareholders] are not actually getting �1.4bn from him [Six Continents is offering shareholders �700m as part of a demerger plan].

They are actually getting �1.4bn borrowed from our balance sheet.

It is their money that they are receiving, not money from him.

It is a cash shell that is bidding for Six Continents.

It is not an offer from another company of cash of their own, being given to our shareholders.

I don't think Mr North has a long track record in hotels.

Their performance has been absolutely abysmal Hugh Osmond

He was previously at Burton, as you may know.

And since he has been involved with the hotels, their performance has been absolutely abysmal.

So I am not sure that he has a track record.

In our case we are not suggesting we are hotel operators, although we did have some experience from having run a hotel business within the Allied Domecq portfolio.

What we are experienced at is taking over big companies and improving their performance.

And we will bring in experienced hotel operators to do the job that we need to do.

The [Six Continents] share price in the four weeks prior to bid speculation emerging was at the same level that it was in May 1987.

I don't think they have set a very difficult task in saying can one run it better.

Putting it another way, they have done 13 major transactions over the past 10 years. They have spent a net �5.8bn on acquisitions and capital expenditure, less what they have achieved through disposals.

And for all that, they have reduced operating profits over the past 10 years by �60m.