Elliott's Paul Singer and his adviser Brett Paton at Escala would have to be delighted with the coverage his proposal to disassemble BHP is generating. Even Mathias Cormann's Assistant Treasurer Scott Morrison was inspired to divert from his metronomic bank-bashing script to promise the Big Australian will always and only be thus. Yet since Elliott declared its intention to shed petroleum and take the Big Australian to the Big Apple, the diversified miner's shares are off 7.5 per cent compared to its nearest rival Rio Tinto. While the share price popped 4 per cent in the moments after the raid's revelation, it has since fallen Icarus-like to earth.

Yet Singer has been a winner in other ways. Since all that publicity started raining down upon his hedge fund, $5 billion of new funds under management have materialised – a handy pick up, especially if Elliott's fee structure is anything like the industry standard of "two and 20". Given it only accounts for 0.17 per cent (not 4 per cent) of BHP's shares on the London Stock Exchange (the listing Singer wants to keep), Elliott's gains on incomings far outweigh its losses on the gentle southerly afflicting BHP paper. Could that have been the whole idea?