Chapter 465 The Duke’s Heir

Even though the market value of Woaw Technology continues to rise after its listing and now exceeds US$18 billion, Barron still has nothing else to be happy about...

On April 25, under everyone's expectation, Bonnie Stuart gave birth to a baby boy.

Although the gender of the baby Bonnie was carrying had been known earlier through ultrasound, her smooth delivery was still something to be happy about.

And this also means that Barron's first son was born. This boy named George Cavendish will become the heir to the Duke of Devonshire in the future.

What’s interesting is that George inherited a pair of emerald green eyes from his mother, Bonnie Stuart. In addition, the outline of his facial features is almost printed in the same mold as Barron, and the slightly wrinkled skin After unfolding, it looks very cute, like a little angel.

As mentioned before, in addition to the title of Duke of Devonshire, Barron at this time also had the title of Marquis of Harrington. George Cavendish first inherited the title of Marquis of Barron after his birth. , became the new Marquis of Harrington.

It has to be said that being born into such a family, George Cavendish can be called the "chosen son".

From the first moment George was born, there were more than 10 maids responsible for everything about him. It can be said that even when he was sleeping, there were more than two maids standing by, ready at any time.

Countess Chris of Bute also came to visit little George with her daughter Ethel, who was about to turn two years old. Ethel looked at her newborn brother with wide eyes, full of curiosity.

"This is your brother, baby. When he gets older, he can play with you..."

Barron hugged Ethel, placed her next to George, and spoke to her softly.

"ba..."

Ethel made a short sound in her mouth, stretched out her chubby little hand, and seemed to want to touch George, but she was hugged by the countess:

"Children are not small or serious. George is still so young. Let them play together when they are older."

…

On May 6, the results of the London District Council election came out. Jo Harriman was successfully elected as a member of the Islington District Council of Greater London with her unequivocal anti-war and call for protection of vulnerable groups during this period. Under the age of 26, it is already extremely outstanding to be elected as a constituency councillor.

Because of this, Joe Harriman was included in the A-level training list because of her label of young + female + minority.

It’s also worth mentioning that, also this year, another young Conservative woman was elected to the Greater London Borough Council – but in Greenwich Borough Council.

Her name was Truss, and she was five years older than Joe Harriman.

Although she has served as a district councilor, it does not affect Joe Harriman's continued work at SEM Group. However, she still resigned from her position in the strategic mergers and acquisitions department of SEM Group and only retained her job as moderator.

Because the additional income of district councilors needs to be announced, she is also doing this to reduce matters that are likely to cause criticism. By continuing to serve as the host, she can also ensure her popularity among the public, and use her appearance in the program to express her views on Her views on many things contributed to her "political star" approach.

…

"Google raised the acquisition price to $2.5 billion, which is very attractive."

This is a call from Ivanta. After Woaw Technology was successfully listed, it launched an acquisition of DoubleClick, owned by IC Capital, with a proposed acquisition price of US$2 billion.

DoubleClick was acquired by IC Capital managed by Ivanta at the beginning of last year for US$1.1 billion.

This company was once the largest Internet advertising company in the United States. During the Internet bubble in 2000, its market value exceeded US$10 billion.

However, as the Internet bubble burst, DoubleClick's market value fell by more than 95%, reaching its lowest level of only $350 million.

DoubleClick has indeed gone through difficult times, but after the acquisition by IC Capital and with the support of its funds, they have worked hard to regain their position in the Internet advertising field and now have nearly a thousand high-quality corporate customers.

Now Woaw Technology hopes to strengthen its profitability in the advertising business after acquiring DoubleClick. According to their estimates, after acquiring DoubleClick, both Woaw and DoubleClick's businesses will be strengthened.

Woaw Technology plans to build an open advertising platform based on DoubleClick, so that not only the large corporate customers currently owned by DoubleClick, but also small advertisers can also get Woaw's flexible advertising package options.

The current form of Internet advertising is still dominated by text advertising. Now, whether it is Google, Yahoo or Woaw, most of the advertising revenue comes from this.

But everyone can see that with the development of the Internet in the future, image and video advertising will be the most popular form of advertising among users.

Next, Woaw also hopes to cooperate with DoubleClick to conduct research and experiments in this area.

But it's not just Woaw. Companies like Google and Yahoo can also see this trend and the importance of DoubleClick.

However, the demands of the two companies are also different.

For example, Yahoo itself has already developed its advertising business in depth at this time. They just don't want Internet advertising competitors such as Google and Woaw to strengthen, especially Google.

Google, on the other hand, had been in contact with DoubleClick for the acquisition in the second half of this year. Now that Woaw has taken the lead, they are naturally unwilling to lag behind and have proposed a higher price, hoping to cut off the deal.

It can be said that Google's current market value is close to 120 billion US dollars, while Woaw is less than a fraction of that. In terms of strength, Google is still much stronger.

But in the end, Barron is behind IC Capital itself. It can be said that the script has been written long ago...

Next, in the competition between several companies, DoubleClick's acquisition bid was constantly refreshed, and finally reached the figure of US$3 billion...

The acquisition price of US$3 billion was proposed by Google. They hoped to make this acquisition in the form of cash and stock.

But in the end, Woaw Technology had the last laugh. They signed an agreement with IC Capital to issue an additional 660 million new shares to IC Capital to acquire DoubleClick, a company it owns.

On the day the acquisition agreement was reached and made public, Woaw's stock price rose 5% to $4.75.

Calculated at this price, Woaw Technology's acquisition of DoubleClick this time reached a price of 3.135 billion US dollars.

In this way, after issuing new shares to acquire DoubleClick, Woaw's total share capital has reached 4.582 billion shares.

DS Group (Cavendish Trust Fund) holds 2.2 billion shares of Woaw, accounting for 48% (with 62.7% of voting rights).

IC Capital holds 660 million shares, accounting for 14.4% (10.34% of voting rights).

After completing this acquisition, DoubleClick will be merged into Woaw and merged with its original advertising department to establish Woaw's open advertising platform.

When IC Capital acquired DoubleClick, the premium reached 50% compared to its market value, and it cost a total of US$1.1 billion.

But just over a year later, he sold the company for more than $3.1 billion and became one of Woaw's major shareholders.

Of course, there are also factors that led to the accelerated recovery of the entire Internet industry after the last Internet bubble burst - just like Google. Compared with its market value of US$23 billion when it went public in 2004, its current market value has expanded fivefold. Times!

But no matter what, for this successful investment of IC Capital, the public and the media once again praised its CEO Ivanta.