No. That is what you would expect a target company to reply when an unsolicited bidder comes knocking. And “no” is what a series of unwanted bidders have lately got. Bottlers have rejected PepsiCo’s unsolicited offers. Anglo American has snubbed Xstrata. Oil company Venture Production is resisting a £1.3bn bid from UK utility Centrica. Meanwhile, Resolution’s offer for British fund manager Friends Provident has run into the sand. What is noteworthy, however, is that these hostile bids have been tabled at all. Only four months ago, the world was supposedly headed for financial Armageddon.

The return of hostility is an encouraging sign. It shows animal spirits are returning to corporate boardrooms. Managers are no longer sheltering from the crisis under the table. Worldwide there are twice as many hostile bids around, as a percentage of total deals, than there have been annually, on average, since 2000. In some countries, there has been an absolute rise too. In the UK there have been more hostile bids so far this year than in all of 2008, even excluding Xstrata/Anglo, according to Dealogic.