Mid-February now seems to be the date when Kerry will find out whether its bid for Dalgety's food ingredients and flour milling business has been successful.

Dalgety announces its half-year results on February 15th and market sources believe that the announcement of the disposal will be tied in to the half-year statement. Final clarification from prospective bidders has to be lodged with Dalgety advisers, merchant bank Lazards by next Tuesday.

Putting a price tag on the Dalgety businesses is difficult, but it will be a surprise if Kerry or any other successful bidder pays less than £300 million sterling (£360 million) for the British group.

Given Denis Brosnan's penchant for using the minimum use of equity when it comes to funding big deals, it seems likely that a placing of new shares equivalent to at most 5 per cent of the existing share capital will raise around £60 million, with the rest coming from bank debt.

That would send Kerry's debt/equity ratio into the stratosphere. But the group has coped with huge gearing before after the DCA and Beatreme acquisitions and the market believes that the group can cope with a debt/ cash flow ratio of 10 times, the level that this key ratio would be if £300 million debt has to be raised to fund Dalgety.

The key then would be how quickly Kerry could offload Dalgety's Spillers flour milling business. A price tag of around £150 million for Spillers could quickly put a big dent in that debt mountain.

That all presupposes, of course, that Kerry wins the struggle for Dalgety. Garry Weston's cash-rich ABF is still in the wings as the main rival.