Melrose could hardly have asked for a better advertisement of its business model - a rare form of intense private-equity-style management on the public markets - than yesterday's sale of its aerospace businesses, once part of McKechnie. The enterprise value of $855.6m (£434.9m) will be two-and-a-half times what the industrial investment company paid Cinven, another buy-out firm, less than two years ago. Given that sceptics wondered at the time whether there was much more to squeeze from McKechnie, that is a fine result, the only blemish being that Melrose has to hold on to its UK subsidiary's pension fund deficit.

Once Melrose has given an estimated £200m back to its own shareholders, expect the company to go hunting for private equity-owned industrial groups that have not responded to the buy-out artists' magic touch, and listed companies with under-exploited potential.