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In the globalised world, there are three big sources of cash for corporate takeovers: Russian oligarchsā€™ money, Middle Eastern oil revenues, and private-equity funds.

has been encountering two out of three.

Earlier this month a consortium of three of the worldā€™s biggest private equity groups retreated from an attempt to buy the supermarket group for around Ā£9.3bn.

And this morning an investment company called Three Delta, which looks after funds for the gulf state of Qatar, spent a touch over Ā£1.4bn buying 15 per cent of Sainsbury.

What Three Delta apparently likes about Sainsbury is all its lovely property, worth somewhere between Ā£8bn and Ā£9bn.

But the conspiracy theorists also believe that Three Delta will join forces with Robert Tchenguiz, the property tycoon, who owns 5 per cent of Sainsbury.

The support for that theory is that Three Deltaā€™s founder and head, Paul Taylor, used to be the lieutenant to Robert Tchenguiz and his brother Vincent, as chief executive of their private businesses, .

However Taylor has told Sainsbury that he is doing his own thing and is not in cahoots with Tchenguiz ā€“ which is certainly plausible, in that former lieutenants frequently like to manifest their independence from their former employers.

That said, the modus operandi of Three Delta is to focus on ā€œasset-backed business acquisitions and direct real estate opportunitiesā€ ā€“ or at least, thatā€™s its official blurb. So itā€™s bound to want Sainsbury to shine the brightest possible light on the value of its freehold estate.

Robert Tchenguiz wants more than a bright light. He and his advisors from the giant US bank recently gave a presentation to Sainsburyā€™s board in which they made the case for Sainsbury being split into two distinct companies. One company would be the operator of the supermarkets. The other would be a tax-efficient property business (a real estate investment trust, or REIT), which would own Sainsbury's properties.

Sainsbury's board believes such a break up would be too risky. It fears that the demerged operator of the supermarkets ā€“ know as an opco in the jargon ā€“ could be too strapped for cash if forced to pay rent to the new separated property company.

Opposition to a radical demerger also comes from the two Sainsbury peers (John and David Sainsbury), their spouses and children, who control 14 Ā½ per cent of the shares.

So the poor Sainsbury board is stuck in the middle. It doesnā€™t believe that Three Delta will support Robert Tchenguizā€™s break up, but canā€™t be certain.

Sainsburyā€™s directors will strive to come up with a compromise, which would probably involve borrowing against the security of the property and returning cash to shareholders.

Either way, Sainsbury does not look like a stable company at the moment, in the sense that the interests and ambitions of assorted owners and managers seem miles apart.

Thatā€™s not healthy for a big business in a highly competitive market which is only mid-way through a recovery programme.

Since Three Delta has indicated to Sainsbury that it is a supportive long-term holder, perhaps it could buy Robert Tchenguizā€™s stake and bring a little more cohesion to the ownership of the company.