Well to be fair to Cyrus, if Deloitte gave any indication that they would consider the 11th Hour Bondholders bid, then the inference could be made that Deloitte may not be following their own rules and conditions in the process, and if thats the case, why not lob in a better/sweeter offer? As you say - gamesmanship abounds. Very short term thinking producing a suboptimal outcome for everyone.
Probably also an excellent example of why you never ever have a shortlist process that excludes bidders, and especially a process that narrows it down to 2 short listed bidders, because it only takes something to go wrong with one bidder, or malfeasance of one bidder, and you have lost all your competitive tension...... thats a stupid way to get the best deal possible for creditors/vendors/owners.
Why didn't Deloitte just run an open data room, give a simple timeline with a hard deadline then have period of no shop no talk, accept and clarify all bids (ignore any bids after the deadline) and then produce a list, then go through the list until the creditors find something acceptable to them? Any departure from a transparent process is just asking for a legal challenge from any unsuccesul bidders, and you dont want to start the process all over again because of an administrative bungle.