Chapter 169 Taking over Manchester United
As mentioned before, Barron can choose to wait until the end of the year. After Manchester United’s coach Ferguson has a conflict with its major shareholder over the horse racing matter, he can further take action against Manchester United. Make an acquisition.
You can also raise your offer now to exceed CubicExpression, which owns 28.7% of Manchester United.
When they returned to London, DS Capital had already met this condition.
After buying 6.45% of the shares of Manchester United from Dobson, a Scotsman, plus the shares of Manchester United that had been purchased from the secondary market, he then purchased them from other small shareholders at the same price. After acquiring a portion of the shares, DS Capital officially announced that their stake in Manchester United exceeds 30%, which is already more than Cubic Expression, which holds 28.7% of the shares in Manchester United!
When the Scotsman Dobson initially purchased 6.45% of his shares, the price the other party asked for these shares would have given the club a market value of 650 million pounds, which was more than double the market value of Manchester United's shares at the time. .
After continued negotiations, the other party was finally willing to sell its shares for 38.5 million pounds, and the corresponding market value of Manchester United club was around 600 million pounds. After DS Capital completed the acquisition, it paid the same price For a consideration, the shares of several other small shareholders were acquired, increasing the shareholding beyond the shares held by CubicExpression.
At this point, the overall situation of DS Capital’s acquisition of Manchester United Club has been basically determined. At this time, as DS Capital and the Glazer family of the United States acquired Manchester United Club shares in the secondary market, its stock price has already reached a relatively high level. It has increased by more than 60% from the initial time, and its market value has reached 500 million pounds!
It seems that with the stock price reaching its current position, CubicExpression has believed that the price is too high and is unwilling to purchase Manchester United Club shares from the secondary market, thereby maintaining its status as the largest shareholder of Manchester United Club.
Now, DS Capital has once again made an offer to CubicExpression to acquire its shares in Manchester United, expressing its hope to acquire their 28.7% stake in the Manchester United club at a price of 175 million pounds.
Their bid corresponds to a market value of Manchester United that is still over 600 million pounds.
If the other party refuses again, then DS Capital can also request to convene a shareholders' meeting of Manchester United to re-elect its board of directors, thus gaining control of the Manchester United club.
Next, by issuing additional shares and injecting capital into Manchester United, we can still dilute the shares of other shareholders.
As for the other party being willing to invest in the same proportion?
Of course this is possible. Anyway, it’s just a matter of comparing who has more money. Even if they invest in the same proportion, the pattern of shares has been determined, unless the Glazer family is willing to side with CubicExpression and invest more money. to the Manchester United club.
With the "blood-sucking" characteristics of the Glazer family, they originally needed to carry out a leveraged buyout to acquire the Manchester United club. After the final privatization, they dumped their debts on the Manchester United club. How could they choose this thankless method?
And if Cubic Expression stands with the Glazer family, then in terms of public opinion, Barron also has a way to put the two under negative pressure.
Therefore, under such circumstances, CubicExpression finally agreed to DS Capital’s acquisition request and sold their 28.7% stake in Manchester United for £175 million.
After this, DS Capital held more than 60% of the shares of Manchester United, completing its control of the club.
It can be said that at this time, Manchester United Club officially changed its entrance hall and became the team of Duke Devonshire.
As things have developed now, the Glazer family saw no hope of acquiring the Manchester United club, and finally sold their 10% stake in the Manchester United club to DS Capital for 60 million pounds, bringing DS Capital's shareholding to more than 70%. %!
Next, DS Capital will continue to absorb Manchester United Club shares from the secondary market. After holding more than 75% of the shares, it will start the privatization process of Manchester United Club, thereby buying out everyone’s club shares, so that these people can A team becomes 100% its private property.
In fact, in the original time and space, it took the Glazer family nearly two years to complete the wholly-owned acquisition of Manchester United at a total cost of US$1.47 billion. This price could be said to be a premium of more than 200% at the time! Many felt they had paid a high price and were destined to lose heavily at Manchester United.
But the fact is, they made a lot of money from this deal.
Why? Because the subsequent development of the Premier League, especially the commercialization process, has greatly exceeded everyone's expectations. With the commercial value of Manchester United ranking first in the Premier League, its income has increased year by year, even if they did not spend much money. They invested in player replacement and even sold Cristiano Ronaldo, who later flourished, at a high price. However, thanks to Ferguson's good planning for the team, they still maintained the top income among clubs in the Premier League and even around the world.
However, because it made the acquisition earlier than the Glazer family, it has a first-mover advantage, and Barron has tied Goldman Sachs Group to its own chariot in the acquisition of O2 Company - the original The main consultant and financial provider for the Glazer family's acquisition of Manchester United in time and space is Goldman Sachs Group.
But now, Goldman Sachs Group has become the main partner of DS Capital in acquiring the Manchester United Club. Therefore, combined with these factors, it is expected that DS Capital will complete the 100% acquisition of the Manchester United Club and the funds spent will be far less than Gray The Ze family's original investment of US$1.47 billion (equivalent to 980 million pounds) only required less than 600 million pounds, which can be said to be a very good deal.
It is also because CubicExpression did not expect that the commercial value of Manchester United would grow so fast in the future, and make more and more money - in their opinion at this time, the market value of 600 million pounds, for a market value of 310 million pounds At that time, the price-to-earnings ratio of Manchester United was much higher than that of other companies. It was really a bit high. Even the Glazer family was optimistic about Manchester United at this time, but they were not as sure as Barron. In the end, they still made money after the acquisition was hopeless. Leave.
Yes, compared to the money spent by the Glazer family to acquire 10% of the shares of Manchester United, the 60 million pounds sold to DS Capital has already made more than 20 million pounds, even without The proceeds from completing the acquisition of Manchester United also gave them some comfort.
For this acquisition plan, DS Capital invested about 200 million pounds in funds, and the remaining funds mainly came from financing from Goldman Sachs Group. After the final completion of this acquisition, they still have a large amount of funds in their accounts that can be used Make an investment.
Of course, this time, Barron will not sell Ronaldo to Real Madrid.
Well, it is worth mentioning that Ronaldo has not yet joined the Manchester United club. He is still playing in Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and will wait until August this year for a fee of 12.8 million pounds. Bought by Manchester United and joined the Red Devils.
On May 3, in the penultimate round of the 2002-2003 Premier League season, Leeds United defeated Arsenal 3:2 in an away game, thus ensuring that Manchester United faced Arsenal where Wenger was the head coach. The team's advantage has enabled Manchester United to lock in the Premier League title this season in advance.
At this time, Barron, who had already decided to join Manchester United and become its new owner, also met with the club's management.
In the conversation with Ferguson, Barron still assured the meritorious coach of Manchester United of his status in the team, saying that he would receive his 100% support.
At the same time, Barron met with David Gill, the future vice-president of the Football Association and FIFA, and said that he will serve as the CEO of Manchester United in the next season.
After stabilizing these two people, Barron has basically stabilized the Manchester United club. The next thing to do is to make the Manchester United club better than the original time and space in terms of commercial operations, so as to surpass Real Madrid has become the most famous football club in the world.
This can also double Barron’s influence.
(End of this chapter)