History suggests Gray said no or a price couldn’t be agreed upon.

Fast forward 12 months and Blackstone has opened the bidding at $11.85 per Crown share. When news of the offer reached the market Crown’s shares flew up 20 per cent to meet the proposed price. As reality set in, the Crown share price began to drift down a little.

Given the highly conditional approach, there are plenty of opportunities for Blackstone to walk away or offer a lower price.

Clearly, Blackstone is an opportunistic bidder - even though the proposed offer represents a 20 per premium to Crown’s prevailing price.

And if the Crown board, headed by chairman Helen Coonan, thinks the overture is in the price ballpark, Blackstone will at the very least be invited to look at Crown’s books.

Crown’s share price has been depressed for more than a year on the back of the NSW regulatory inquiry into its suitability to hold a licence in that state and the subsequent announcement of two state-based royal commissions into whether it’s fit to hold licences in Victoria and Western Australia. And Crown’s casino closures due to COVID for most of 2020 has played havoc with its earnings and finances.

Smaller institutional shareholders were vocal on Monday about Blackstone’s attempts to steal the troubled casino group. But they won’t decide Crown’s ownership. Packer and his long-time supporters Perpetual have the register sewn up.

If Packer agrees to this offer he could walk away with around $3 billion and never set foot in Australia again.

Two years ago Packer would have been insulted by such an offer - one that was $2 shy of what he then wanted.

But the beaten-down billionaire, who has endured more scrutiny and criticism over the past year than he could have imagined and who is lining up for two more rounds in the royal commission ring, might be prepared to leave half a billion on the table for some peace.

If he agrees to this offer he could walk away with about $3 billion and never set foot in Australia again.

People close to him say he is loath to do any deal with The Star - which fought hard to block him from getting a casino in Sydney. This is despite the fact that a deal with The Star would rid Crown of a lot of suitability issues and a merger would create synergies unavailable to Blackstone.

If The Star wants to stay in the game it now needs to decide whether it has the stomach and the finances to go head to head with Blackstone which boasts numerous successful forays into the offshore casino industry.