Now that Allied Domecq has effectively put the sale of Cantrell & Cochrane on hold, no doubt advisers, Goldman Sachs, Warburg Dillon Read and IBI, will be keeping their eyes on corporate developments elsewhere in the drink industry. Collective wisdom had it that IBI believed a flotation of C&C would generate the best price for Allied Domecq, while Goldman and Warburg favoured the trade sale route.

Certainly, until the stock markets caught the wobblies in September and dropped 20 per cent in value, a flotation looked like the best option with Irish and British institutions likely to stampede to a C&C share offering.

Now, the multiples are a lot lower and Allied clearly believes that there is no need to rush into a sale, whatever the mechanism used. That said, C&C - no matter how profitable it is - hardly fits into the global brands strategies that now preoccupy booze manufacturers in the wake of the Diageo merger. C&C will be sold, it's simply a question of Allied getting the right price.

So what sort of corporate activity has there been in the booze business to give some indication of the prices companies are fetching. One thing is certain, Allied will not even contemplate selling C&C for the sort of price that Canadian group, Canandaigua, has offered for the British cider maker, Matthew Clark. Canandaigua has come in with an offer for Clark which is the equivalent of less than 8.5 times earnings per share.

If C&C manages to increase after-tax profits by 20 per cent this year - and that seems eminently achievable given the demand in the domestic economy - it would result in after-tax profits of around £52 million. An 8.5 times multiple would value C&C at less than £420 million. Not a chance.

Unlike Matthew Clark whose shares fell from more than 800p to nearly 100p after a series of profit warnings, C&C is a company which has recorded strong and steady growth and there is no comparison between the two companies.

Given that Allied paid £270 million to Guinness for half of C&C, there is no way that the British giant would even contemplate a sale until it could get a price close to £700 million - either through a flotation or a trade sale. Judging by the instruction given to IBI, Goldman and Warburg to review the scope for a float when stock markets recover, Allied seems to believe that demerging C&C through a flotation is the more likely option.