Chapter 376 Marconi Company

"Okay, our relationship doesn't have to be so quarrelsome. Lao Ma, I can let Yahoo be the main investor in this financing as you said, but our shareholding ratio also needs to be guaranteed..."

In fact, Barron also understands that even if he knows that Alibaba's market value will skyrocket in the future, after comprehensive consideration, he cannot say that he holds too high a proportion of shares.

Boss Ma’s feelings are on the one hand, and on the other hand, if he holds too high a proportion of Alibaba shares, or even reaches the level of a controlling stake, then the future development of this company will also be subject to many restrictions, which is not impossible. Couldn't reach the heights it reached later.

Therefore, this time, Barron does not mind taking a step back, but he still needs to win at least 40% of the shareholding ratio to reach the share of Yahoo in the previous life.

At the same time, in order to reassure Boss Ma, Barron will also hand over the voting rights corresponding to the shares he holds to Boss Ma until he reduces his holdings in the future...

In his previous life, when investing in Yahoo, Boss Ma also had such worries.

In order to ensure his control over the company, Boss Ma and Yahoo reached a special agreement at the time——

That is, Yahoo held 40% of the shares, but entrusted 5% of the voting rights to Boss Ma until October 2010.

On Alibaba's board of directors, Jack Ma's management team held two seats, and Yahoo and SoftBank each held one seat. This was also until October 2010.

And before October 2010, the board of directors could not remove Jack Ma from his position as CEO under any circumstances.

This is also the reason why in 2008, Yahoo's top management changed, Yang Zhiyuan resigned as CEO, and the strong woman Bartz took over. Boss Ma began to raise funds to repurchase Yahoo's shares in Alibaba.

It is because Yang Zhiyuan maintained a good personal relationship with Boss Ma during his tenure as Yahoo CEO. At that time, Yahoo and Alibaba got along well...

But Bartz, a strong IT woman, had a different approach. When Boss Ma took his team to visit Silicon Valley, Bartz publicly accused Alibaba of failing to run Yahoo China well, and Bartz even showed her ambition to control Alibaba. The changes in Yahoo brought about a series of actions that made Boss Ma very worried about the changes in the other party after October 2010, so he tried his best to repurchase Yahoo's Alibaba shares before then.

In the subsequent conversation between Barron and Boss Ma, they set the tone for Alibaba’s next round of financing.

Barron's agreed to inject 50% of Taobao's shares held by Rich23 Capital into Alibaba Company to make it a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Company. However, negotiations on valuation need to continue, and Rich23 Capital also needs to Exchange them into Alibaba shares at the same price as Yahoo.

Of course, the upper limit for the exchange of shares is to lock in 40% of the Alibaba shares held by DS Capital and Rich23 Capital after financing.

As for how many Alibaba shares Yahoo can get by investing its Yahoo China assets and cash, it depends on how much Boss Ma is willing to spend...

But no matter what, in this way, Alibaba will at least be able to obtain more funds than in the original time and space.

…

On March 15, the board of directors of Marconi announced that they had accepted Rich23 Capital’s offer to acquire the remaining shares of Marconi at a price of 3.5 pounds per share.

This price is more than 80% higher than the previous lowest share price of Marconi Company. Even compared with the extreme price of the sharp drop at that time, it is higher than the average share price of Marconi Company in the previous 30 trading days. Nearly 40%!

Calculated at this price, the corresponding market value of Marconi Company will reach 800 million pounds!

When Rich23 Capital had decided to complete the acquisition of Marconi Company, Barron was also in Shanghai and met Boss Ren, the chairman of Huawei, who had arrived.

"Did Mr. Ren just come back from London?"

In the living room of Cavendish Garden, Boss Ren did not see the Hearst sisters this time, because just yesterday, the two sisters had returned to the United States contentedly.

"It's a coincidence that you happened to be here after I returned to China..."

After Alya personally brought tea to the two of them, Barron gently stirred the current coffee and said to Boss Ren:

"I haven't congratulated you yet. Huawei has entered British Telecom's priority supplier list. This will be a big order."

"For this matter, the person who should be most grateful is Your Highness the Duke. O2 Telecom was the first to give our company the opportunity and is also our most valued partner."

"We at O2 Telecom also attach great importance to cooperation with your company. At the same time, I personally appreciate your professional attitude in cooperation. Now there is another opportunity for cooperation. I wonder what Boss Ren thinks?"

"what do you mean?"

Barron showed a faint smile on his face and said to Boss Ren:

"Marconi Company..."

In fact, at the very beginning, Huawei was indeed very interested in Marconi Company and hoped to acquire it.

Even in the original time and space, this was done, but it was blocked by Ericsson at that time.

Of course, things are not much better now. The sudden appearance of Rich23 Capital, which already holds 30% of the shares, has become a big obstacle for all companies that want to acquire Marconi.

This includes Huawei, Ericsson and other companies.

After all, with Marconi's shareholding distribution, 30% of the shares are already its major shareholders. Even if they join in forcefully and can block the other party's first tender offer with a higher bid, it will inevitably happen later. Because of the share issue, it fell behind.

Moreover, Rich23 Capital’s bid itself was higher than Huawei’s estimate.

As for why Ericsson didn’t raise prices to compete?

In fact, in a previous life, Ericsson joined the acquisition of Marconi, mainly targeting Huawei, which was most likely to acquire the company at that time.

You must know that at that time, both Ericsson and Huawei were on the priority supplier list of British Telecom's "21st Century Network Plan".

Therefore, both parties are in a competitive relationship and both hope to obtain as many planned projects as possible.

It turns out that when Huawei wanted to acquire Marconi, Ericsson, as a competitor, would naturally compete at all costs to snatch Marconi, which was more experienced in British Telecom's network and equipment, from it.

But when the acquirer of Marconi becomes Rich23 Capital, an investment company that is not on the list of outstanding suppliers of the "21st Century Network Plan", although acquiring Marconi is also beneficial to Ericsson, the other party is not Huawei, so they The willingness to bid well above what Marconi's company was actually worth was greatly reduced.

It was also because of these subtle mentality that ultimately contributed to Rich23 Capital’s successful acquisition of Marconi Company.

“I know that you were also interested in Marconi before. After all, as a long-term supplier to many British telecommunications companies, including British Telecom, Marconi has rich experience in this and knows its network better. "

Barron said calmly:

"But with all due respect, even without Rich23 capital, the possibility of you successfully acquiring Marconi is very slim..."

Now that he holds Marconi Company in his hands and cooperates with O2 Telecom, Barron can discuss deeper cooperation with his boss.