Just surmising, but I think SJ’s bid is slightly more nuanced than we are giving him credit for.
The man is obviously not a simpleton and has his own experience and experienced team around him.
He, obviously, is aware of more than we are, and we can only speculate, however, it seems to me that he is aware of the division amongst the siblings.
Given his previous posturing he has in excess of £6 billion at his disposal, sure we have never seen it, but the Raine group must have seen at least 5 billion plus.
Clearly he has the means to buy the club and offer more than SJR is offering, currently.
If he really wants the club he could just use that extra finance, available, and undertake some of the plans at a later stage.
Accordingly, the question is why hasn’t he done that? I think he knows his offer is acceptable to some members of the sibling group. However due to their own internal arguments and possibly J and A looking more favourably at staying on he is being frustrated by the Raine group and hence the continuing delay.
He has now raised the ante-and put a deadline on his bid so that they engage with him and is sweetening the deal with more money.
If you are one of the siblings and you wanted out but knew you would receive less money today because A and J want to stay on and that they will receive more money in three years for doing nothing then for any business minded person this is quite hard to accept.
However if all six of the siblings stay on, the rewards of hanging around will then be divided between them, but this means less for A and J, not 18% between them.
If all of them share 18% of the shares then each of them gets 3%. If you think about it, hanging around for 9% makes good business sense but hanging around 3% is much less attractive.
I think, SJ realises this and is now putting a gun to their head to accelerate the process.