Chapter 709: Absolute Control
October 18th is Barron’s birthday.
Before this day, Caesars Fund finally reached an agreement with the French Vivendi Group. They will complete the acquisition of the 61% stake in Activision Blizzard held by the Vivendi Group for US$7.5 billion. acquisition.
This price represents a premium of approximately 13% to Activision Blizzard’s market value at this time, slightly lower than the US$8.1 billion previously requested by Vivendi Group.
This is also one of the results of the negotiations between Caesars Fund and Vivendi Group during this period.
In addition, before this, Caesar Fund has also absorbed approximately 5% of Activision Blizzard’s shares through the secondary market. Activision Blizzard is a listed company. After the stock price fell during the subprime mortgage crisis, due to the release of "World of Warcraft" With stable performance, their stock prices have risen considerably.
In this way, after completing the acquisition agreement with Wangdi Group, Caesars Fund will hold approximately 66% of Activision Blizzard's shares, which also means that as long as they acquire a few more shares, they can Completed absolute control of Activision Blizzard.
At that time, Caesars Fund will have almost all control of Activision Blizzard, the world's top game company.
Of course, the Caesar Fund itself is mainly focused on investment and will not be deeply involved in Activision Blizzard's operations. At most, it will only provide some opinions.
Therefore, before this, they had already had in-depth communication with the management of Activision Blizzard and reached a tacit understanding with them - after the acquisition, Caesars Fund would not interfere too much in the short term. The company's operations.
Although Barron knows that the future management of Activision Blizzard is not very satisfactory, and there are also some criticisms.
But his acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a layout for the game industry. He does not think that if he runs the company personally, he will do better than the current management.
Besides, he doesn’t have so much energy to do this at all. He owns so many industries. If he does it all, he won’t have so much time and energy even if he doesn’t eat or drink.
So it would be better to let Activision Blizzard maintain its original operations, as long as Caesars Fund does appropriate supervision.
“The management of Activision Blizzard had intended to acquire the shares of Activision Blizzard held by Vivendi Group through MBO, but because the asking price of Vivendi Group was too high, and at this stage those The syndicate was very cautious. After evaluation, they all believed that this financing was too risky, so it did not succeed..."
Caesar Fund CEO Pat Friedman told Barron's.
The so-called MBO refers to Management Buy-Outs (MBO).
That is, the managers and managers of the target company use the raised capital to purchase the company's shares to achieve changes in the company's ownership structure, control structure and asset structure, and to realize the role of managers as owners and operators. A kind of acquisition behavior in which Heyi's identity leads the reorganization of the company and then obtains the expected return on property rights.
To put it bluntly, it is a way for the company's managers to obtain funds through some financing methods, acquire shares of the company, and thereby gain control of the company.
The reason why they did this was because the management of Activision Blizzard and the major shareholder Vivendi Group had differences in the company's management before, so they hoped to acquire the other party's shares. This puts the Vivendi Group out of business.
However, although their MBO was unsuccessful, after Caesars Fund acquired the shares of Activision Blizzard held by Vivendi Group, it replaced Vivendi Group as the controlling shareholder of Activision Blizzard.
The Caesars Fund seems different from the Vivendi Group. They do not have much control over Activision Blizzard's operations, but instead hand over most of their power to the company's management.
Therefore, this result is also very satisfying to Activision Blizzard's management.
......
Now that Barron has more women, the only thing is that he will be busier on birthdays or various festivals - not just him, as a Barron's personal assistant, Zhang Junning, will also be busy.
If it were just a "canary", his assistant could handle it and just arrange some gifts.
But there are still many women with whom he has a closer relationship that require him to spend time and energy to deal with. But no matter what, Barron will always leave the most important time to his wife Bonnie... who is now his ex-wife.
Unconsciously, it has been more than 7 years since he came to this world, and Barron has also reached the age of 30.
In addition to the changes in status and wealth, and the calm temperament of a superior person developed as a result, Barron's appearance still does not seem to have changed much, and he still maintains his youthful status and perfect figure. .
However, in order to better match his current status, Barron also began to grow a beard, which gave him a more mature and elegant feel.
Now George Cavendish is three and a half years old. Compared to his younger brother Richard Cavendish, he looks like a little adult, like an angel. He has such a cute face that anyone who sees him wants to pinch his face.
At this time, he was looking expectantly at the birthday cake on the table, congratulating his father Barron on his birthday in a childish voice.
And Bonnie was holding her youngest son Richard, staring at the scene in front of her, her eyes filled with happiness.
Little Richard was babbling something, and stretched out his little hand towards the cake. Bonnie lovingly pulled him back into her arms and kissed him on the face.
...
At the same time, Paris is also in a beautiful mansion. The atmosphere is not as warm as Barron's home. Instead, it seems to be full of depression everywhere.
“I want to know how things happened.”
Benjamin Rothschild said expressionlessly, looking at the men in front of him.
"Sir, we are investigating..."
"Are you starting the investigation now?"
Benjamin suppressed his anger and asked:
"What's going on with the bank's regulatory system? Why didn't such a big thing be discovered until after the bastard disappeared? Loss!”
“Then, that guy named Pete” Yi Yuan used fake accounts to deceive the supervisors, and we occasionally do this when we are conducting some... transactions, so..."
With a "bang", Benjamin grabbed the The cup on the table fell to the ground, and he gritted his teeth and asked:
"So our risk control system is in vain? Just one trader can cause us losses of more than 3 billion euros?!"
"Sir, I promise to find that Peter and investigate thoroughly. The whole thing..."
"This must be done. In addition, I also need to know the specific losses. Also, I need to review all investments in the entire NM Rothschild Bank. I don’t want this kind of thing to happen again..."
Benjamin looked at the other party coldly and said:
"We must know whether this is an accident or premeditated!"
(End of this chapter)