Chapter 355 Digital Future

"Mr. Esser, I believe that our cooperation this time will be the beginning of friendship between the two parties."

"I hope so too, Your Highness the Duke, this is the first time we have purchased financial products from a British private investment company, and we also take a fancy to your strength in the investment field."

This time he came to London and met Barron with Sven Esser, CEO of Norges Bank.

After the investment agreement was signed, Barron shook hands with Sven Esser and said with a smile:

"I won't disappoint you either."

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the investment management institution of Norges Bank, has been responsible for the international asset investment affairs of Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), one of the world’s largest sovereign funds.

This time, the investment agreement they signed was for NBIM to purchase up to US$1 billion in fixed income products from Caesars Fund on behalf of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund.

The current capital scale of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund is nearly US$1 trillion. Compared with this fund size, it seems that buying a Caesars fund product of US$1 billion is not too high.

But the significance is that, as Sven Esser said, this is the first time they have invested in the financial products of a British private investment company, so the US$1 billion in funds can be regarded as their "pathstone." , if the future cooperation between the two parties can satisfy them, they are likely to continue to invest more.

Peter Friedman, CEO of Caesars Fund, has previously worked at NBIM. This time, Norway Global Pension Fund’s investment in Caesars Fund was mainly facilitated by him.

Norwegian Global Pension Fund purchased a US$1 billion fixed-rate financial product for a period of 3 years, with an average annual rate of return of 10%...

According to statistics, at this time, government bonds account for more than 50% of the investments of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund, and the remainder includes investments such as stocks, corporate bonds, and real estate...

Since the Norwegian Global Pension Fund began to participate in stock investments in 1998, until the end of last year, its average annualized return was about 6%, and its annualized net return was about 4%.

Therefore, for this investment by Caesars Fund, if the final return they receive can reach an average annual rate of 10% as promised, it will have far exceeded the average return on this sovereign fund's investment.

The current Caesars Fund, in addition to the US$8 billion invested in it by overseas offshore companies controlled by Barron, includes investments from British local capital, Middle Eastern capital, and European funds such as the Norwegian Global Pension Fund. Total funding has reached US$12 billion.

At the end of January, after completing the acquisition of Yingyun Logistics, they still had US$7.5 billion in funds to be used.

Of course, these funds will not be idle. Next, the acquisition of another company will be launched.

But before that, Caesars Fund invested in the establishment of a subsidiary, Digital Future Investment (DFI).

On February 1, Digital Future made its first investment, investing US$20 million in DailyVedio.com, holding a 40% stake in the video sharing website.

DailyVedio.com was originally a website created by O2 Telecom when it cooperated with Digital UK to add entertainment services to its broadband business.

At that time, O2 Telecom cooperated with Digital UK to provide home broadband packages for Freeview users. In order to expand the entertainment service categories for its broadband users, the two parties cooperated to launch a website that allows users to upload their own videos for free and share them publicly. That's DailyVedio.

Prior to this, DailyVedio was jointly held by O2 Telecom and Digital UK, each holding 50% of its shares.

However, due to the problem of broadband transmission rate in the past, DailyVedio could only allow users to upload videos of a certain size and duration to prevent the network speed from being too slow and affecting the viewing experience. Therefore, until now, although many users use DailyVedio.com, its users always The number of users has exceeded 2 million, but its frequency of use is not high and there are not many active users.

For this reason, O2 Telecom and Digital UK do not pay much attention to DailyVedio. After all, it is obvious that the current broadband speed is extremely restrictive for this kind of video website, and DailyVedio itself is only one of the services they provide to users. "Free service", even if some advertisements are added, the income is slightly better than nothing.

You know, the more users this kind of video website has, the greater the bandwidth and storage space it requires, and the higher the investment required.

Under the current circumstances, the two shareholders of DailyVedio have no motivation to develop this website at all, as long as such a service exists.

Although Barron knows the development potential of video websites in the future, at this stage, the actual conditions are not yet suitable for the development of this category, so he has not imposed any mandatory requirements on this.

But now it's 2005, including BT's upcoming "21st Century Network Plan" and O2 Telecom, which will also start their fiber optic plans. Next, broadband speeds will begin to improve a lot.

And it’s almost time for YouTube to start appearing, so DailyVedio has also reached a time window where it can start to develop.

So at this time, the Digital Future Investment Company under Caesar Fund began to make efforts. After investing US$20 million in the DailyVedio.com website, it will begin to open this website to the public based on DailyVedio. It is not limited to Former O2 Telecom and Digital UK users.

And some technical talents will be organized to develop relevant streaming media technologies so that DailyVedio can give users a better experience.

After completing this investment, Digital Future will hold 40% of the shares of the DailyVedio website, and O2 Telecom and Digital UK will each hold 30% of the shares. Digital Future will become the largest shareholder of this company.

As can be seen from the name of Digital Future Investment Company, this investment company under Caesar Fund will mainly involve investments in computer technology and Internet companies.

In addition to investing in DailyVedio.com, Digital Future also invested in the purchase of an old warehouse in Shoreditch, East London, which was still a dilapidated urban area at this time, and planned to demolish it and build a new one. A 15-story building, the Digital Future Building, will be used for DailyVedio and digital future technology incubation projects after completion.

At present, there is not much to see in this area of ​​Shoreditch, East London, but it will have a name in the future, called London Technology City.

The East End of London is an area in east London and near the port. It was once a crowded slum area with narrow streets and dense houses, mostly built in the mid-19th century.

During World War II, most of it was damaged by bombing and later rebuilt. There are traditional industries such as clothing, shoemaking, furniture, printing, cigarettes, and food.

The East End of London has historically been regarded as a slum. In Conan Doyle's writings, the most dangerous place in London in the fog is the East End.

It is close to the dock, and most of the residents are poor people and immigrants who were born as coolies. The famous "Jack the Ripper" once lived here.

With the industrial transformation of London in the 1980s, many abandoned industrial buildings emerged. This old industrial-style building and low rent attracted many cash-strapped artists to work and live here, and it gradually became an important art district in London.

Starting in 2000, the strong atmosphere of innovation here and the much cheaper rent compared to the nearby old financial city attracted the first batch of programmers to settle here.

They rented an office in the Old Street roundabout area. This roundabout will be the world's third largest gathering place for scientific and technological innovation industries after Silicon Valley and New York in the future, gathering tens of thousands of high-tech companies and hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. The origin of London Technology City, the technological elite, is also known as London's Silicon Roundabout.

Barron's own goal is to at least own the "Facebook" of this world - Woaw, a global social platform, while other Internet projects, such as e-commerce, mobile payment, and local life, at least At least, we must stick to the European market.

But relatively speaking, from the development of previous generations, we can see that compared to the United States and Greater China, the development of the Internet in Europe lags far behind, and there is not such a strong atmosphere.

In this field, he certainly cannot work alone. The entire Internet industry is needed to incubate more European Internet rookies.

Now, he is ready to invest in this incubation, and the digital future is the "nutrition" for him to incubate these Internet companies.

And through this incubation process and targeted venture investment, the digital future can also obtain sufficiently generous returns.