Parallel talks with British Midland, which wanted to transfer all of BCal's scheduled services from Gatwick to Heathrow, ended without result at an early stage because BCal's senior management felt that this was not feasible given the tight slot situation at London's premier airport. BCal maintained that it had held several rounds of exploratory talks concerning the airline's potential takeover with a number of US carriers that were willing to pay a substantial premium over BA's original bid to acquire BCal. These talks had come to nothing because the US carriers feared that there were insurmountable regulatory obstacles to such a cross-border acquisition in the highly regulated airline industry. SAS was prepared to offer £110 million for 26% of the British Caledonian Group's stock, valuing the entire group at £400 million. Jan Carlzon, the then chairman of the SAS group, was well aware that so-called "nationality clauses" in most bilateral air services agreements and most countries' legal framework regulating the ownership of their airlines would restrict SAS's direct involvement in BCal's finances to acquiring a minority stake in its holding company. SAS therefore dispatched a team of executives headed by Jan Carlzon to the UK to work out details of a joint bid. This envisaged setting up an employee trust fund that would hold the same percentage of British Caledonian Group stock on behalf of the group's employees as SAS itself was seeking to acquire, so as to be compliant with any rules limiting the stakes foreign individuals or entities could own in a British airline. They were prepared to extend a loan to the trustees of the envisaged employee trust fund to enable them to acquire an equal number of shares on the employees' behalf. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that worked on SAS's bid for 26% of the British Caledonian Group's common stock, proposed this to be structured as a so-called "exploding share". This would have enabled SAS to increase its holding in British Caledonian Group plc to a maximum of 40% through subsequent acquisition of additional non-voting shares. These in turn would have become ordinary shares following greater market liberalisation. The SAS executives discussed these ideas with BCal's senior management and the unions representing its staff at the British Caledonian Group's Crawley headquarters as well as with Government officials in London. SAS faced a barrage of hostile propaganda and delaying tactics from BA that were designed to stall any third party's competing bid to acquire BCal for as long as possible and got a mixed response to its planned counter bid for BCal from various departments of the UK Government.