Yes @RedMan, I had the same thought and put $20K (of real money) into BEL, then after doing further research on them (much of which made it into those straws you mention), I realised that was way too much because the risks were a lot greater than I had originally anticipated.  The upside is substantial but so are the risks, and the upside looks less likely when you look at the players involved and their possible motivations.  I have since taken most of that $20K off the table at a loss.  However, with the position I had added to my Strawman.com Scorecard at around the same time, I have left that untouched just to see whether I can make money out of it over time.  I would class this as a very LOW conviction "investment".  And not so much an investment as a punt.  It looked like easy money up front, but when things look that easy there is usually a catch, and in this case there are a few of them.

"Perhaps a takeover and consolidation of entities or just a giant salary collecting scheme?"

I think you might have nailed it with the giant salary collecting scheme comment there.

I haven't looked at this web of mini LICs for a long time, but if ever LICs derseved to trade at less than half NTA, the likes of BEL, QUE, OEQ etc is probably easily justified to be under half the NTA.

I would not read anything too bullish about GW on the register of QUE. GW is not short of a $ so in money terms it is probably like me having $5 each way on something at Flemington. I don't think he and the QUE board would be sending Christmas cards to each other. So maybe GW likes to have a stake there just for nuisance value.

Summed up beautifully SteveG.  I agree 100% with all of that.  So much can go wrong.  SRK, which underpins it all, can go down (SP drops), which reduces the NTA of all of the others, but that's just the most obvious factor.  There are plenty of other things that could happen, and only a few of them are positive for ordinary retail shareholders.