Chapter 153 Are you serious?

In late March, DS Capital finally reached an agreement with O2 Company on the acquisition. Eventually, their DS Industrial Investment Fund will use cash to fully acquire O2 Company at a price of 5.5 billion pounds.

Speaking of which, O2 is just their brand name at this time, and the company's full name is still BT Cellnet. However, after being acquired by DS Capital, the company will be renamed O2 Telecom (O2 Telecom) and will cooperate with Digital UK in the UK. Promote low-price home broadband packages and IPTV-related services.

In this acquisition, DS Capital provided 500 million pounds of funds, and at the same time raised 2.5 billion pounds from Barclays Bank and Goldman Sachs Group respectively. The interest rate on this financing was as high as 12%!

In other words, every year they will pay up to 600 million pounds in interest for this total of 5 billion pounds of financing!

This seems to be a very big burden, but if you understand that two years later, Barron's spent a total of 5.5 billion pounds plus 1.2 billion pounds in interest, a total of 6.7 billion pounds, to buy the original space and time. At that time, Telefonica spent 177 If the O2 company can only be acquired for 100 million pounds, it will be a bloody profit...

After DS Capital completed the acquisition of O2 Company and made O2 Telecom a wholly-owned subsidiary, the news also caused a sensation throughout the UK.

Because after all, despite facing competition from Vodafone, Orange and other companies, O2 is still at the forefront of the UK's mobile communications business. It is surprising that such a company was acquired, and it was acquired by a previously unknown company. be surprised.

However, after learning that financial leverage was used for the acquisition, many reports believed that such a high proportion of financing was destined to bring down O2, and were not optimistic about its future development.

In this regard, DS Capital did not give any response. After all, from the initial acquisition of independent newspapers, Barron's acquisitions have never been favored by others.

However, it turns out that the results he obtained were all successful.

After completing the acquisition of O2 Company, DS Industrial Investment Fund once again obtained 8.5 million additional ordinary shares issued by Sinclair Group at a price of US$24, accounting for 9% of its total share capital. For this purpose, it will Paid £136 million to Sinclair Group.

This transaction is part of the previous in-depth cooperation plan between SEM Group and Sinclair Group.

Prior to this, Sinclair Group had invested and held 10% of the shares of SEM Group. Now that DS Industrial Investment Fund has received an additional 9% of shares issued by Sinclair Group, the two parties hold considerable shares in each other, which is why they are more The basis for close cooperation.

At present, Sinclair Group has introduced SEM Group's "The Traitors" variety show to the North American television market, and will soon shoot the American version of "The Traitors" reality show at Chatsworth Manor in May; and in After SDTV finishes broadcasting the first season of "Downton Abbey", it will also introduce this critically acclaimed British drama to North America.

Similarly, many of the contents currently broadcast on the SDTV TV channel are imported from the Sinclair Group, which also enriches the content of SDTV. Summit Media even has plans to start from the second half of this year. Added a TV channel SDTV channel 2.

…

"Your Highness the Duke, we have rented an office building in Cambridge and are preparing to transfer the Woaw website to off-campus operations. We will recruit about 5 full-time employees in the future. Together with the part-time employees in the school, we will basically be able to cope with the current situation. Work."

Reporting to Barron was Khalid Revere, the technical director of the original independent newspaper website—it was Davor Babrin who he initially introduced to Barron to help him create the Woaw website.

Originally, Barron was planning for Davo to serve as the CEO of the Woaw website, but now it seems that Davo is more obsessed with technology and has little interest in the daily operation of the website.

Therefore, Barron finally decided to transfer Khalid Revere from Independent Newspapers to Woaw website to serve as its CEO; while Davao served as CTO (chief technology officer).

Currently, after the Woaw website is open for registration to universities and high schools in the UK, the number of registered users of the website has exceeded 1 million, so it was decided to move it out of the University of Cambridge and start formal commercial operations.

Don’t think that 1 million registered users is not many. It seems that many websites later have hundreds of millions of users. But you must know that at this time, the number of global users of blog websites is only more than 1 million.

At the current stage, Woaw website pays more attention to the quality of users and the good atmosphere of the website, so user registration is still being checked.

Otherwise, if registration is fully opened, the number of users of the Woaw website will explode immediately, because at this time, the number of users logging in to the website as tourists has exceeded 10 million.

At this time, when the Woaw website has no strong competitors, what Barron hopes is that this website can train the team and establish a good foundation through controlled development.

Barron's invested another £1 million into the Woaw website to upgrade equipment and daily operations.

With Khalid, a CEO who has performed well in the independent newspaper industry, under his control, he is relatively confident about the development of the Woaw website.

…

"I didn't know you were interested in fashion, Mr. Boot."

"It's an art, isn't it? It's mainly Chris who always likes to participate in this kind of activity."

After hearing her husband's words, the Viscountess sitting next to Viscount Bute curled her lips slightly.

Now Barron and Butt are sitting together in the audience under the T stage, with models walking like butterflies in front of them - this is this year's non-traditional London Fashion Week.

Different from London Fashion Week in September, Non-Traditional Fashion Week is specially held for the new generation of British designers to showcase their unique designs.

However, Barron is not interested in those costumes that he thinks are quite weird.

"Congratulations, Your Highness the Duke, you have successfully taken over O2 Company. This will make your influence even higher."

It seems that Viscount Bute did not pay attention to the T stage in front of him. He said to Barron:

"Argent Real Estate Group has also contacted several interested investors, and there may be results for this financing soon."

"Do you remember that I said that we can actually bear the funds for this financing? Mr. Butt."

Hearing Barron's words, Viscount Bute was slightly surprised:

"Are you serious? That would cost at least 100 million pounds..."

"I'm not kidding, Mr. Butt. In fact, Argent Real Estate Group can now terminate contact with other investors. My DS Capital can provide the group with 200 million pounds of funding. As you said last time, 20 % shares.”

At this time, Viscount Bute found that he could not see through the young Duke more and more. At first, he thought that if Barron wanted to eat a company of the size of O2 in one bite, he would probably get a toothache, even if Even if he barely ate it, he would inevitably suffer from indigestion - after all, with his assets, it would be an absolute disaster to have to bear such a high level of financing.

For this reason, Argent Real Estate Group did not consider Barron's side of the financing at all.

but now……

How much money does he have? Is there anything else you don’t know?

But no matter what, Viscount Bute will not easily agree to let Barron get so many shares. If this financing is all borne by him, then the proportion of Argent Real Estate Group shares controlled by Barron will be as high as 36%, which is already a threat. To the Bout family after their shares were diluted.

"I also said, Your Highness the Duke, our Bute family will also assume the obligations of the major shareholder and will use part of the funds to participate in the financing this time..."

"I have no objection to this, Mr. Butt, how much money are you prepared to invest?"

Viscount Bute had already calculated this. After pretending to think about it, he said:

"We could come up with £50 million..."

In this way, after the original controlled shares are diluted, with the addition of these 5% shares, the Bute family can still ensure that the shares they control can be close to 50%, which is relatively safe.