Chapter 391 Waiting and watching for now

After Barron returned to London, he replied to the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group. Regarding the acquisition of Unocal, they believed that United Energy Group was not ready for an acquisition of this scale at present and needed to wait and see for the time being and conduct further evaluation. .

This is not to say that Barron is really not interested in United Energy Group’s acquisition of Unocal in the United States. After all, if this acquisition can be completed, the benefits to United Energy Group will be obvious. United Energy Group plus Unocal will definitely be a perfect match. Add one to the combination of two.

It’s just that the results of previous investigations into Unocal’s shareholders and the capital behind them have indeed confirmed some of Barron’s guesses...

On the surface, Unocal has little to do with capital including Vanguard Group and BlackRock Group, but in fact, many of Unocal's shareholders have Vanguard Group behind them.

According to speculation, Linghang Group and its "allies" control at least 20% of Unocal's shares.

In this way, we can understand why Goldman Sachs Group was so active in this incident. I am afraid that in addition to helping United Energy Group acquire Unocal, they want to earn income including service fees and financing interest. In addition, Linghang Group is not satisfied with its current 5.8% stake in United Energy Group, but wants to acquire more United Energy Group shares through this merger and acquisition of Unocal.

After all, this kind of merger and acquisition with a scale of nearly 20 billion US dollars is definitely not possible to use all cash for acquisition, and stock exchange is also an inevitable method...

Exchanging the Unocal shares in your hands for United Energy Group shares will be even more tempting for Pilot Capital!

Because with a little analysis, it can be seen that the merger of Chevron and Unocal will be less complementary than the other CNOOC and United Energy Group. The merger of the two will inevitably have overlapping business departments.

Choosing among these is just like when you go back to when Google just went public and you spent the same money to choose to buy Microsoft or Google stocks. I am afraid everyone will know how to choose.

If this is the case, Barron's is not eager to let United Energy Group join the acquisition too quickly.

After all, compared to Chevron, United Energy Group and CNOOC have one of the biggest disadvantages, that is, they are both foreign-funded enterprises.

In the process of acquiring Unocal, whether it is United Energy Group or CNOOC, the US authorities will inevitably review their acquisitions on whether they will affect "national security."

In the original time and space, the suggestion that CNOOC's acquisition of Unocal would threaten the "national security" of the United States was very ridiculous...

Because first of all, Unocal's oil production in the United States is less than 1/3 of its total production, and it accounts for less than 1/100 of the overall sales in the United States.

In addition, some of Unocal International's oil and gas will not be sold to the United States.

Secondly, the United States has strategic resource reserves, but it implements a bidding system. Unocal has never participated in the bidding. Moreover, Unocal has no downstream refining and chemical business and does not provide chemicals, fuel or aviation oil to the US government or military.

The petroleum industry technology used by Unocal cannot be used in the military. Unocal also does not have any agreements to provide services to the US government and military.

Therefore, from the perspective of U.S. national security, there is no problem with this acquisition.

But in the end, they still did not hesitate to amend their energy bill to prevent CNOOC's merger due to various reasons.

Although in these aspects, United Energy Group is a British company - and Britain and the United States are still the closest allies at this time. Therefore, the question of "posing a threat to the national security of the United States" faced by CNOOC is not On the United Energy Group side, there is a high probability that American officials will not have such a strong reaction.

But in the final analysis, Chevron still has great advantages in these aspects-after all, it is an American company.

United Energy Group's acquisition of Unocal will need to face additional scrutiny from the United States, while Chevron only needs to deal with antitrust scrutiny.

Although both Unocal and Chevron are at the forefront of American oil companies in terms of size, Unocal itself does not have a high number of businesses in the United States, so it did not pass the antitrust review in this acquisition. Not that difficult.

In addition, a certain proportion of stock replacement is also required in the acquisition, but the replacement plan can still be discussed in a wide range.

Since these things exist, there is no need for Barron's to let United Energy Group be too proactive in this acquisition.

But again, there will be no explicit rejection.

It would be best to just keep a wait-and-see attitude, and finally join the acquisition after Vanguard Group and Goldman Sachs Group show some sincerity, and let them use their resources in the United States to help United Energy Group solve all aspects of its problems. s Choice.

But before that, United Energy Group also needs to solve part of the funding problem and prepare in advance for subsequent acquisitions - the acquisition of Unocal will require US$17.5-18.5 billion. Even if a certain proportion of stock payments can be made, even with Goldman Sachs They are waiting for financing from investment banks, but the more funds they can come up with themselves, the better.

…

Earl Bute's family is still very lively. After all, there are three children now. The two twins are more than one year old, and Barron's "seed" is the daughter Ethel who was born by Chris herself. , will be one year old soon...

Of course, even the countess' figure is very tolerant...

But she will definitely not be able to provide food for these three children. In fact, the count has a special "nanny" in his family for this purpose, and there is more than one. The countess does not have to bear these responsibilities at all.

After hiding in the bedroom, Barron and the countess went through a series of sweaty knowledge studies. After rinsing and simply tidying up, the two returned to the living room refreshed and chatting.

Earl Bute also appeared "at the right time" at this time and talked with Barron about business matters.

"As you said, Argent Real Estate Group does have the conditions to go public, but is it really necessary?"

Barron asked unexpectedly when Duke Butezi mentioned that Argent Real Estate Group was interested in an IPO.