Exercising caution: Dominc Walsh takes a close look at the health and fitness sector.(Behind the Headlines)

With the majority of the health and fitness club sector now in private hands, it is not quite so easy to keep tabs on what the major players are up to. Where once we would have regular updates on key measures such as numbers of joiners, attrition rates and like-for-like sales, not to mention detailed financial numbers, now we must content ourselves with occasional pronouncements that, for the most part, provide only the sketchiest details of how a business is performing. One thing that we definitely don't get is any idea of a company's financial position.

The notable exception has been LA Fitness. Thanks to Fred Turok's determination to resist the siren calls of the private equity world--and his own confidence in LA's ability to cut the mustard as a public company--we still get interim and full-year results and the odd trading update.

The other exception is David Lloyd Leisure, though because it is part of the Whitbread group we don't get quite as detailed an assessment as we would if it were a separately quoted company in its own right.

But when it comes to the likes of Fitness First, Holmes Place, Esporta and Cannons--all of which have quit the stock market in recent years--and privately run operations such as Bannatyne Fitness, Virgin Active and Next Generation Clubs, we have to rely for the most part on a mixture of speculation, rumour and gossip.

The rumour mill was at its most active during the summer, when all the talk was of Cannons and Holmes Place holding talks over a possible merger. Meanwhile, Next Generation, Fitness First and Bannatyne were said to be weighing their options for a possible flotation or trade sale. Speculation was also rife that Whitbread was pondering the pros and cons of spinning off David Lloyd while Esporta and Virgin Active were said to be discussing some sort of asset swap.

Although just about all the speculation has gone off the boil, that doesn't mean it wasn't (at least partly) true. Let's take the Cannons/Holmes Place merger rumour. My understanding is that detailed talks were held over a couple of months but that, with neither side able to agree on the value of each other's equity in such a merger, talks have now gone cold.

Not that the rationale for such a merger is going to go away. Before Holmes Place's precipitous fall from a grace as a public company, a takeover by Cannons had been all but signed and sealed, only to fall apart when Holmes's trading took a sudden lurch downwards at a critical point in the due diligence.