Chapter 150 The right choice

"Mr. Rolf, His Highness the Duke also asked me to tell you that Barclays Bank and your friendship with the Devonshire family will always face tests. I hope you make the right choice."

Looking at the public relations consultant of the Cavendish Family Office in front of him, Annabella's friendly smile revealed a bit of determination. Rolf also smiled:

"Ms. Nolan, Your Highness the Duke can rest assured, because I value my friendship with him very much."

The reason for the meeting between the two was that Barron had received a piece of news from Viscountess Bute before, which was overheard through her. At the Argent Real Estate Group, I am afraid that Viscount Bute did not fully understand him. Be honest.

Increasing a loan from a bank is a good idea after Argent Real Estate's King's Cross renewal plan exceeds budget due to rising building material costs.

But Viscount Bute prefers to solve the funding problem by introducing investors who are closer to him - this can also increase the shares they can control, thereby maintaining control of the Argent Real Estate Group.

Of course, if it is necessary to increase capital and expand shares, Barron is not completely passive. According to the original investment agreement, he also has the power to increase capital and maintain the shareholding ratio.

But the problem now is that Barron's has started merger and acquisition negotiations with O2 Company. This is a very large-scale acquisition. Even with the help of financial leverage, I am afraid that it will be difficult for Barron's to come up with any additional money while this plan is in progress. Funds invested in Argent Real Estate Group.

Therefore, after Barron's consideration, one thing he must be aware of is that the easiest way to grasp the flow and scale of his funds at this time is Barclays Bank, which has cooperated with him in many fields.

This led to today's meeting between Annabelle Nolan and Rolf. Through Annabelle, Barron needed to remind Rolf not to stand on his opposite side.

At this time, the merger negotiations between DS Capital and O2 Company had made certain progress. Barron's raised the acquisition price to 5 billion pounds. Although O2 Company also reduced the price, it still insisted on a price of 6 billion pounds and would not let go.

Next, in order to gain the support of O2's management, Barron's contacted it and ensured that after the acquisition, if there were no major problems in O2's operations, the company's management would not be significantly adjusted.

This is also when Barron knew that in the original time and space, the management of O2 Company was doing pretty well in the back, successfully opening up the French and German markets, and allowing O2 Company's communication business to enter the European continent, so this was the reason for this express.

At the same time, through the "coordination" between the royal family and the government, and more importantly, the rapid development of Digital UK this year - as of early March, the number of users of the Freeview platform has exceeded 1 million, and it is predicted that new additions will be added every month. The number of users will reach an explosive growth of 400,000-500,000 households.

Digital UK will also use the latest technology to install upgraded set-top boxes for users, which will have some network functions.

In this case, if DS Capital, the controlling shareholder of Digital UK, can successfully acquire O2, then O2 will receive a cooperation order from Digital UK in the Internet broadband business, thereby directly adding millions of users. This is also what makes O2 willing Reasons for making certain compromises with DS funds.

As mentioned before, O2 was originally spun off from British Telecom. During the great development of the telecommunications industry around 2000, British Telecom's business also continued to expand.

However, due to the impact of the Internet bubble crisis, British Telecom began to suffer significant losses. In this context, they divested themselves of mobile communications and other businesses for individual users, while mainly retaining their own telephone business and corporate services. The company's broadband business.

Therefore, in addition to mobile communication services, O2 also has broadband services for individual households at this time.

But compared to its mobile communications business, its broadband business is not as competitive as other companies.

But Barron knows that 3G networks are coming soon, and by then personal home mobile Internet services and broadband services can actually be integrated to form a highly competitive package service.

Faced with the large number of potential users provided by Digital UK, O2 is also very greedy, hoping to strengthen the scale of their broadband business.

…

On March 10, ministers and ministers from OPEC member states arrived in Vienna to attend the 124th OPEC meeting to be held the next day.

With the United States launching a war against Iraq on the verge of breaking out, what is urgently needed to be agreed upon at this meeting is what measures OPEC should take to alleviate possible crude oil supply shortages in the international market once the war interrupts Iraq's oil exports.

At the meeting, in order to ensure oil supply and prevent oil prices from skyrocketing, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries advocated that once the United States goes to war with Iran, the organization's production quotas will be temporarily lifted and all member countries will be allowed to open up production.

However, countries such as Iran, Algeria and Nigeria oppose lifting the quota, believing that the current market supply is sufficient and there is no need to increase production.

Algerian Energy and Mining Minister Khalil said that OPEC had increased daily production twice last year, with an increase of 2.8 million barrels. Therefore, there is no need to increase production even if a war breaks out.

Iranian Oil Minister Zanganeh even raised the oil price issue to a political level, saying that Iran does not support politically motivated decisions.

Industry insiders believe that the question is not whether the temporary cancellation of OPEC mining quotas will be included in the agenda of this meeting, but how much capacity OPEC members have to increase production.

The actual situation is that at this time, except for Venezuela, whose oil production has not yet reached the limit, most of the other member states are extracting in excess of their quotas due to the temptation of high oil prices and have no ability to increase production.

If Venezuela cannot resume production quickly, it will be difficult for OPEC alone to fill the gap once Iraq's crude oil exports of 1.7 million barrels per day are interrupted.

Under this circumstance, the market generally believes that if the war does break out and Iraq's oil production capacity is "cleared", the trend of international crude oil rising again is inevitable.

By this time, the price of international crude oil had slowly fallen from the highest level of US$36 in mid-February to over US$30.

Although DS Capital's short crude oil futures account already had a lot of floating profits, facing the situation at this time, even Daisy, who had always trusted Barron's decision-making, could not help but persuade him again that he should act appropriately. To close the position, at least reduce the leverage multiple to avoid a real war coming and a short-term surge in oil prices, leading to a liquidation of the position.

Prior to this, on March 7, the United States, Britain and Spain submitted their latest proposal to use force against Iraq to the Security Council. However, in the vote of the permanent members, only the United Kingdom and the United States voted in favor, while China and France abstained. , Russia vetoed it with one vote.

This resolution was also opposed by most European countries. Among the major European powers, France and Germany were opposed, and only Portugal expressed support.

The Norwegian government stated in Oslo on the 10th that once Iraq is hit by war, the Norwegian government is prepared to provide emergency assistance of 100 million Norwegian kroner (approximately US$71.8 million) to the Iraqi people.

At this time, Barron knew that after understanding that there was no hope of passing the UN authorization and that the United States could not get enough support votes, they would not give up using force against Iraq.

War is coming soon.