Chapter 415 GII Fund Phase II
In late August, Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing Group, also completed its acquisition of the Primark clothing chain.
At this time, the market value of Fast Retailing Group has reached about 4 billion U.S. dollars, which is a considerable improvement compared to the market value of less than 3 billion U.S. dollars when Global Industrial Investment Fund acquired them.
In this merger, the Primark clothing chain, which has more than 300 stores, is valued at US$2.5 billion (approximately 1.43 billion pounds).
So after acquiring the Primark clothing chain through the issuance of additional shares, Primark became one of the sub-brands of Fast Retailing Group.
In this way, Fast Retailing Group's shareholding ratio has become Global Industrial Investment Fund holding 40% of its shares; Argos Retail Group holds 38.46% of its shares; Yanai Zheng family's shareholding has been reduced to less than 15% ...
Fast Retail Group has also entered the European market through this acquisition of the Primark clothing chain. In the future, they will use Primark's sales data to promote Uniqlo's store opening plan in Europe.
However, the focus of UNIQLO's development below is still the Chinese market - in Barron's previous life, the Chinese market is the market with the second largest number of UNIQLO branches after the Japanese market, and it has contributed the most to it. Profitable, this also shows the importance of this market to Uniqlo.
At the same time, Primark will also start to expand in the Asian market, especially the Japanese and Chinese markets, through the channels of Fast Retailing Group.
Another benefit of this merger for Fast Retailing Group is that after merging the manufacturing departments of both parties, it will have economies of scale, and the entire Fast Retailing Group will be able to do better in cost control than before. Well, it also makes them more competitive.
After this, Fast Retailing Group has also established a partnership with Argos Retail Group. Their brands, including Uniqlo and Primark, will be launched on Argos Retail Group’s online mall Argos.com, and they will build an online store in France that radiates throughout Europe. The transit warehouse distributes goods for sales on Argos.com and their various branches.
As Argos Retail Group focuses on the e-commerce field, they have also begun to invest in laying out a network covering Europe. Entering every country, starting with the transit warehouse and delivery network, plus the same British The cooperation with transportation and logistics has now been able to cover the most elite areas of Western Europe.
The share of sales through their Argos.com website has also increased from less than 10% initially to more than 25% currently. It can be said that this has contributed greatly to the growth of Argos Retail Group's revenue.
……
“Currently, the returns from short selling in the foreign exchange market can only be said to be good, and have not yet reached our ideal situation. However, in terms of crude oil futures, it is relatively more impressive. Satisfied.”
While talking to Barron, Daisy also called up the exchange rate of the euro against the U.S. dollar and the trend of international crude oil prices.
In terms of international crude oil, at the beginning of August, the price of oil had already reached the stage of 60 US dollars. By the end of August, it had continued to rise and was about to reach the price of 70 US dollars.
It can be said that this month, the price of international crude oil has been growing steadily, and DS Investment Company, which is long crude oil futures, has also made huge profits as a result.
"The other is the Mars Fund. According to our calculations, we can get more than 1 billion U.S. dollars in income from this withdrawal of income sharing."
Speaking of this, Daisy's face changed. She couldn't help but smile. It's no wonder. Such a high income also means that her bonus will not be too low.
September is coming soon, which means that the Mars Fund will once again welcome the opening of the investment window.
Last year, the Mars Fund received more than $600 million in revenue sharing, and this year, this number increased to more than $1 billion.
Of course, this also means that the Mars Fund has brought more generous returns to users. At present, the total size of this fund has exceeded 7 billion US dollars. It is estimated that soon, after the end of this investment window , it can exceed the scale of 10 billion US dollars.
This time, Barron’s plans to invest the income share of the Mars Fund into the Global Industrial Investment Fund. To be precise, it is the second phase of the GII Fund.
The previous GII Phase I fund received a total of US$6 billion for investment, including US$1.8 billion of DS Capital’s own funds.
Nearly all of these funds have been invested in projects such as Fast Retailing Group, Four Seasons Hotel Group and the acquisition of the London Stock Exchange.
However, Barron also found that in terms of attracting funds, the GII Fund was still relatively poor compared to the later Caesars Fund, mainly due to the participation of funds from the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority. The main reason is that the GII fund is not a fixed-income product like the Caesars fund, but more similar to the Mars fund, in which DS Capital collects investment income shares.
In addition to the projects previously invested by GII Fund, the asset appreciation during this year was not as obvious as that of Caesars Fund - mainly because the performance of United Energy Group invested by Caesars Fund was too outstanding, and GII Fund lacks such "star projects".
Although Barron knows that in terms of final income, the GII Fund is definitely higher than the Caesar Fund, but it will take longer to reflect, and often in investment, people always Subconsciously focus on short-term results.
Although the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority have not said anything about the investment in the GII Fund, it can be seen from the subsequent capital investment that at present, it is the Caesar Fund that is more favored by investment. People are welcome.
Therefore, Barron decided to end the first phase of the GII fund and will not continue to seek investment in the short term, but to establish a new GII fund for the second phase.
The second phase of the GII Fund imitates the Caesar Fund and mainly provides customers with 3-5-year fixed income products. The income sharing of the Mars Fund will mainly be used as DS Capital’s own funds. , invested in the GII Phase II Fund.
But now Barron’s is fully confident to obtain investment at a lower rate of return. Therefore, in the future, whether it is Caesars Fund or GII’s second-phase fund, its fixed-rate investment products , the yield will not be as high as before, and will be set at an annualized fixed income of 8%-10%.
Even at this rate of return, it is very attractive among relatively formal and large-scale investment products - of course, it cannot be compared with the "Ponzi scheme" like the Madoff Fund.
But if he really wants to pursue high returns and invest in Madoff, Barron can only give in.
But speaking of it, it is true that Madoff will not absorb any random funds. After all, he is also an experienced financial person. The reason why the Madoff fund can last for so long is not because of the subprime mortgage crisis. Maybe there was no thunderstorm so early, and it was not without reason.
As we all know, the so-called Ponzi scheme uses the principal of latecomers to pay the interest of earlier investors...
Therefore, if this scam continues, it will have a negative impact on the absorption of funds. Rhythm control is very important.
It does not mean that the more funds you can "cheat" at once, the better, but the amount of funds that need to be absorbed is like an inverted pyramid. It needs to be increased at a certain pace to enable subsequent increases. The amount of funds can maintain the interest payment of the former, and will not lead to a collapse because the increase is not enough to maintain this high-interest game.
At this point, Madoff has done a very good job. He has been controlling the amount of funds he absorbs, and even made people outside feel that only people with certain qualifications can enter the Madoff Fund, and they all regard those who can be attracted by Madoff. What Madoff "cheated" was regarded as a symbol of his status...
So from this point of view, the amount of funds absorbed by the Madoff Fund is still very measured. Most people, even I know there is such a high-income fund, but it is difficult to squeeze into it.
On the contrary, this may not be said to be involved in other investment funds in terms of return rate.
(End of this chapter)