Five months ago, over a sushi dinner at Melbourne’s Nobu, Sigma boss Vikesh Ramsunder and his major shareholder David Di Pilla were toasting a win. Sigma, the listed company in which Mr Di Pilla’s HMC Capital had built a 19 per cent stake since 2022, had won a lucrative contract to supply drugs to Chemist Warehouse, the private retail giant co-founded by Mr Di Pilla’s first cousin Mario Verrocchi, and the Gance brothers 50 years ago.

That’s when the lightbulb moment hit. That night the pair, at dinner with Sigma chairman Michael Sammells and Victoria Hardie who runs HMC’s Capital Partners Fund, started to kick around the ambitions of a much bigger deal.