Chapter 416 Difficult Task

On September 1, the listed company Summit Media announced that they would issue new shares to acquire other businesses of SEM Group, including its shares in Digital UK, independent newspapers and 30% of Stuart Media.

After completing this acquisition, Summit Media will change its stock name to SEM Group with the stock code SEMC.

In fact, this is to inject the entire SEM Group's assets into the listed company Summit Media, thereby completing a "backdoor listing."

The remaining assets of SEM Group are assessed at 1.5 billion pounds - in fact, their 45.9% stake in Digital UK alone is worth nearly 1 billion pounds.

This time, Summit Media will issue an additional 45 million shares to complete this asset injection.

Of these 45 million shares, DS Capital received 40.5 million shares and Sinclair Group received 4.5 million shares.

In this way, after completing this injection, DS Capital's shareholding in SEM Group (listed company) is 135 million shares, accounting for 62.14%; Sinclair Group holds 14.5 million shares, accounting for 6.9%.

This time, the additional stock issuance, in exchange for the injected SEM Group assets, was carried out at a price of more than 33 pounds per share. Compared with when they acquired ITV, the stock price increased by more than 10%...

Therefore, there is no objection from other shareholders, including the original shareholders of ITV, to this asset injection.

After injecting assets this time and changing the stock name and code, the stock price of SEM Group once again rose by more than 5% as soon as the market opened. It can also be seen that the market is also optimistic about this operation.

The current share price of SEM Group is around 34.75 pounds, with a total share capital of approximately 210 million shares and a market value of 7.3 billion pounds, which is similar to the market value of BBC and Sky TV.

In the current British television media industry, the BBC, Sky Television and SEM Group are truly the three giants.

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In addition, Argent Real Estate Group has also started its IPO road show. This time they will be listed on the main board of the London Stock Exchange.

According to the plan, Argent Real Estate Group will publicly issue 171 million shares, accounting for 15% of the total share capital after the issuance.

At present, they have set the issuance price of the stock at 4.5-5.5 pounds. Calculated at the highest of 5.5 pounds, Argent Real Estate Group will raise approximately 940 million pounds through this IPO. Based on this calculation, Argent Real Estate Group’s The market value will also reach 6.27 billion pounds.

Well, you must know that in their last financing before this, DS Capital invested 150 million pounds and obtained 15% of the shares. At that time, Argent Real Estate Group was still valued at 1 billion pounds.

DS Capital and Devonshire Family Trust now hold a total of 31% of the pre-IPO shares, which is about 300 million shares. Based on the issue price of 5.5 pounds, these shares are already worth 1.65 billion pounds.

Because it has led the urban renewal plan of King's Cross, the largest urban renewal plan in London in the past 150 years, Argent Real Estate Group's prospects are still very promising.

However, what is interesting is that the issue price of Argent Real Estate Group can be set at this price, and the results of the road show are also very satisfactory. One of the very big factors is that DS Capital is also one of the major shareholders of this real estate group.

What we have to admit is that "believing in successful people" is the most common mentality among people.

DS Capital has also been successful due to its development over the years and has a strong brand effect. The projects they have invested in have also begun to be trusted by investors.

This sense of trust cannot be established overnight. It takes repeated successes and almost no failed investments before it is finally accepted by people and a consensus is formed.

Just like on Wall Street, there are countless geniuses shining like comets, but the ones that can really make those big institutions confidently invest huge amounts of money are Berkshire Hathaway, Blackstone, and Vanguard. Such a long-lasting veteran player.

DS Capital has also begun to move towards the ranks of such "old players".

For example, the second phase of the Global Industrial Investment Fund launched by Barron’s this time received an enthusiastic response after sending the fund’s relevant policies to well-known sovereign funds and public funds around the world. Even this second phase of the fund The annualized fixed income product used by the fund has a rate of return of 8-10%, which is lower than the previous products such as Caesar Fund and Athena Fund (at this time, the annualized rate of return of these fund products is already the same as that of the GII Phase II Fund). flat), it did not affect the enthusiasm of these investors at all.

Before the Mars Fund opened this year's investment window, after extracting a share of investment income of US$1.2 billion, DS Capital invested the US$1.2 billion as its own funds into the GII Phase II Fund.

The investors who came to London to participate in the GII Phase II Fund this time include not only the "Middle East tycoons" such as the Qatar Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, but also the British Pension Public Investment Fund and the Norwegian Government Global Pension Fund. Fund, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Japanese Government Pension Fund and other public investment funds in the Western camp.

Compared with the GII Fund’s first-phase fund’s total capital scale of US$6 billion, the second-phase fund reached a record scale of US$12 billion.

This kind of intensity and speed of fundraising was unimaginable more than two years ago, when DS Capital first established the Mars Fund.

And this is often the case, when the scale of this kind of fund becomes larger, the more trust it can give people, and the more confident investors can be to join it by waving their money...

In fact, this is the result of the GII Fund deliberately limiting the fundraising scale to US$12 billion after rejecting many investors whose sources are not so "clear" - after all, they don't want to cause trouble, and some of them come from relatively chaotic sources. He did not want to get involved with the funds of regional military governments or "investment companies" in Eastern Europe and South America that were suspected of being involved in criminal groups.

Often those groups are more bold and generous in their actions, but with Barron's current status, there is no need to do this kind of thing involving "money laundering". Even if he can pretend to be confused, relevant international institutions will definitely keep an eye on it. on his GII fund.

After the second phase of GII Fund was established, GII Fund CEO Finn Hudson came to London and met with Barron.

After talking all afternoon, Finn Hudson took a deep breath and said to Barron:

"This is a difficult task, Your Highness."

"But I believe that if it can be done, it will change the landscape of the industry."

Hearing Barron's confident words, Finn Hudson looked solemn:

"I hope so, I will try my best to complete it."

After having this conversation, Finn Hudson took a flight from London to the Netherlands without waiting for the funds for the second phase of GII to be fully received.