Clear failure or success will also decide a titanic ego struggle between Sunday Independent business editor Senator Shane Ross and Hobbs, who have waged a war of (some would say equally unappealing) personalities on radio, in print and online.

Observers with interests vested and otherwise . . . ranging from bruised critics posting to the Brendan Burgess-run Askaboutmoney. com website complaining of threats against them made by the "BI Hydra" to dozens of property mavens looking for kabuki theatre to leaven the bloody mess of Michael Lynn et al . . . will be champing at the bit to see whether BI has raised enough money to be judged a success.

The amount raised will also determine the size of the 1% management fee to be split between Hobbs and four other BI board members.

The directors would split 1m if BI raised 100m, and so on.

So what's the magic number for success?

BI entered due diligence discussions this month on 115m worth of commercial and retail properties in Dusseldorf and Cologne. The fund is designed to be 75% geared, so presumably the fund will need to raise at least 27m to be able to successfully complete those deals.

The BI prospectus assumes the fund will raise 50m, so any number above that threshold will allow Hobbs to claim uncontested victory over his critics.

But in a series of columns, Shane Ross continues to claim that BI would be lucky if it managed to convince punters to pony up 10m in total . . . even after the fund changed its rules to triple the maximum allowed investment from 250,000 to 750,000.

So if anything, Ross has set the bar so low it's hard to see how BI won't clear it.