Spain’s Iberia Airlines yesterday gave a boost to the joint takeover offer by British Airways and the TPG private equity firm when it opened its books to the bidders. However, the cat-and-mouse game continued as Iberia made the move conditional on receiving a binding offer from the consortium. Otherwise, it said it would continue to hold back commercially sensitive data from the bidders. Iberia fears giving commercially sensitive data to rivals that have made only a non-binding offer. TPG and BA, however, say they cannot make a firm offer until they have seen the full accounts. The consortium has made an indicative bid of ¤3.60 a share. Iberia’s board said that the group’s continued interest was “positive”, but “in no way does this mean the board is validating the offer”.