If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. Nippon Sheet Glass’s fourth suggestion of a suitable price for Pilkington, the UK glassmaker, has finally proved acceptable. The 165p a share cash offer is a vindication of Pilkington’s hardball stance during the bid, as well as its turnround strategy since the late 1990s.

The bid values the equity at £2.2bn and represents a 30 per cent premium to the price in October before NSG’s first proposal of 150p a share. The long-term faithful among Pilkington’s shareholders may look back nostalgically to a decade ago, when the shares breached 200p. But a more appropriate comparison is the 50p they fell to in 2003, the legacy of failed diversification and, in spite of heavy cost-cutting and improved cash generation, lingering doubts about the company’s future.