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A Sainsbury’s director said to me a year ago, “you watch, when it’s clear that we have turned the business around, private equity will come in with a bid”. And so it’s proved – well almost, in that what we have this morning is that most modern of City announcements, viz “an announcement of a hypothetical possibility of a takeover offer subject to enough conditions and caveats as to make the statement less valuable than the electronics used to beam it to the market.”

Sainsbury is a business well into its recovery phase. And lo, this morning there’s a statement from a consortium of three private equity houses saying they are “at the preliminary stages of assessing Sainsbury”. Which slightly gives the lie to the widely held view that private equity investors take more risk than public company investors. The truth is subtler: Private equity is more comfortable with certain kinds of risk than public-company investors. What private equity is prepared to take is increased financial risk: It is prepared to massively increase the indebtedness of a business in order to up the returns.

But private equity does not much like to combine this financial risk with operational risk – and it’s therefore a comfort to it that Sainsbury under Justin King has demonstrated that Sainsbury can grow again, even if that means any takeover would be at a higher price.

However the timing of this not-quite bid approach is also linked to Lord Sainsbury’s resignation from Government last autumn. He signalled at the time that he wanted to devote his time and wealth to charitable undertakings, which implied that his substantial shareholding in the company would be available for purchase. And as if to confirm that, yesterday it was disclosed that 40 million of his shares had been sold, leaving him with a holding of just under 14%.

The troika of potential, putative, possible bidders is led by CVC Capital Partners, the UK’s number two private equity house. And it also contains Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – the world’s biggest private equity business – and Blackstone, which also ain’t no minnow. The three of them certainly have the firepower for such an undertaking. And they’re being advised by Lazard Bros and Goldman, two leading investment banks.

However, it’s relatively early days. The consortium was formed earlier this week. They appointed a public relations adviser only yesterday. And they have had no formal contact or meetings with Sainsbury’s management or board.

So will this become a proper bid? Well, the consortium didn’t have to make its announcement today. What happened was that the Times published a about a possible private equity bid for Sainsbury this morning. Sainsbury’s share price raced ahead. And the Takeover Panel told the consortium it had two choices: either disclose that a bid was possible; or close down the option of bidding. The troika decided to make a statement and press on.

That is the evidence that they are serious. On the other side, Sainsbury’s share price has raced ahead today by more than 15% to well over 500p (513.75p at the time of writing). And so the Private Equity Three will be concerned that the business has become just a bit too pricey.

My prediction is that they will come up with an indicative price for a takeover offer that’s high enough for Sainsbury’s board to at least have preliminary negotiations on a deal. Apart from anything else, they may be the only possible bidders, so this may be a once-and-forever opportunity. The reason is that the competition authorities wouldn’t allow another supermarket group to own Sainsbury. And it’ll be hard – though not quite impossible – for a rival private equity consortium to be formed to make a rival offer.

If there is value in Sainsbury, where would it be? Well this story is largely about Sainsbury’s property, the value of its stores as physical assets rather than as trading shops. The broking firm, Numis, recently estimated that its freeholds are worth about £7.5bn, which compares with the current market value of the business as a whole of £8.8bn.

A year ago, Sainsbury realised some of the value in its properties by borrowing just over £2bn against the security of 127 stores. A private equity owner would do a great deal more of that kind of thing, to extract cash from those assets.

So for Sainsbury’s existing shareholders, this is what a decision on whether to sell out will come down to: do they want to lock in the current higher Sainsbury share price (or a bit more) by selling out to private equity; or would they stick with Sainsbury’s management and encourage them to take more financial risk, extract increased returns from the property, and pass that back to shareholders in the form of special dividends or share buybacks?

It’s quite a big moment in the history of the relationship between private equity and the owners of publicly listed companies like Sainsbury. It’s significant that CVC is in the lead for the troika. It was part of the duo (with Texas Pacific) which is widely perceived to have bought Debenhams too cheaply from the stock market and sold it back to the market too expensively. Shareholders won’t want to make the same mistake again with Sainsbury.

UPDATE 15:32 GMT: Would the private equity troika want to keep Justin King in place to run Sainsbury if they succeeded in acquiring the business? On the basis of my soundings, I think they would. Which, of course, puts him in a tricky position - if he were to run Sainsbury after a buyout he would have the opportunity to become wealthy well beyond what he can accumulate running a listed business. If he is on course to earn a few millions in his current role, private equity could offer him many times that.

On that basis, he plainly couldn’t be involved at all in adjudicating whether the private equity troika were offering shareholders enough to buy the company. He would have to stand well to one side as the Sainsbury non-executives decided whether any bid terms were generous enough.