'holic - my mistake, I misunderstood what you were asking.
what I don't understand is what difference it makes for shares the hedge funds already own.
What you say would make sense if you were talking about a fund manager that was investing in a conventional way (picking stocks based on dividend stream, long term value, index weight, P/E or some other metric. The standard managed fund (BT, Colonial etc) that you might invest in uses this sort of approach. Indeed, in the case of super funds (for example) the fund managers are governed by rules set by trustees which limit the criteria used to select investments. They constantly adjust their positions by buying and selling, but in most cases their aim is to make money by holding a valuable stock for the medium term.
Hedge funds don't usually operate in this sort of conventional way. In this case the funds haven't simply taken a position in Qantas and then put the shares in the drawer until it's time to accept. They are constantly and actively trading a proportion of the stock they hold every day - looking for opportunities to make a cent or two here and there. You can see this here:
http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/C...de=QAN#details
Look at the 2nd of May (Wednesday). There were nearly 64 million shares traded in a range of $5.30 to $5.35 - and remember for each seller there has to be a buyer. The market was still highly liquid as funds moved in and out of positions. They would each have been aiming for a particular weight in the stock, and each would have had a slightly different view as to the trading range and profits to be made. As Direct Anywhere said above, they don't just want to send in an acceptance and stop the party early, so they keep trading and stay liquid right up until the last minute.
Your confusion is understandable - in this case the funds have no interest in long term value based investing, which is why the position reached last night (assuming the buyout doesn't proceed) is bad news - the airline's share register is now at the mercy of these people.
Hope that helps.
SW