Chapter 478 Gold Mine
Just on July 25, President Jammeh Bongo of Kolo visited neighboring Burkina Faso. In its capital Ouagadougou, he met with Burkina Faso’s military president Blaise Compo. Lei held talks and the two sides finalized a series of economic cooperation agreements.
Among them, the West African Mining Group will invest in Burkina Faso and purchase a large area in Kiaka for exploration and development.
Yes, the president of Burkina Faso at this time is still Compaoré, who assassinated Sankara, the "African Guevara" of Burkina Faso, the "country of gentlemen", in 1987, and came to power through a coup.
After Compaore came to power, he corrected Sankara's "overly radical" economic policies. His policies were more "moderate and pragmatic" and focused more on relations with various countries, especially neighboring countries.
Therefore, President Kolo's visit was given a grand welcome by Compaoré.
Among the series of cooperation agreements between Kolo and Burkina Faso, the United Bank of West Africa will be allowed to operate in Burkina Faso, and the United Bank of West Africa will provide Burkina Faso with US$50 million. The low-interest loan will be repaid with Burkina Faso's related mining revenues.
At the same time, the West African Mining Group obtained the exploration and mining rights in the Kiaka area, which is about 50 kilometers southwest of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and less than 200 kilometers from the northern border of Kolo.
The reason why the West African Mining Group wants to obtain the mineral mining rights in this area is because there is an undiscovered gold mine with extremely high reserves.
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, covering an area of 274,000 square kilometers. It is also the fourth largest gold producer in West Africa.
The Kianka gold mine was later estimated to have reserves of nearly 200 tons, and the gold mines here are very shallow and can basically be regarded as open-pit gold mines, and the difficulty of mining is not high.
At this time, the West African Mining Group has basically completed the integration of the Australian OZ Mining Company. Next, after conducting mineral exploration, they will organize technical personnel transferred from the Australian company and miners recruited from Kolo. A mining team was formed and entered the Kiaka area of Burkina Faso to mine gold.
It is also worth mentioning that the most popular occupations among ordinary people in Kolo currently include oil workers, miners, mercenary soldiers and drivers.
As the output of Kolo Petroleum Company continues to increase, their demand for oil workers is also increasing. Those Kolo oil workers who have passed the training and are able to work on the drilling platform can earn even 10-10% of the average salary in Loti. 15 times, which can be said to be the highest income category among ordinary people.
Secondly, there are the miners - at first, it mainly refers to the miners in the mines under the West African Mining Group and the Stuart Mining Group that cooperates with it. However, due to competition, the wages of miners in the French mining companies have also had to be increased. , their average salary can also reach more than 5 times the average local salary in Loti, which is similar to the salary of the mercenary soldiers of the Colo Corps (the salary of personnel deployed to Iraq is double, which can reach 10 times).
Finally, there is the driver. Due to the expansion of Loti Port and the fact that Kolo has begun to strengthen transportation infrastructure and vigorously carry out entrepot trade, the demand for transportation drivers has greatly increased. Not only has the number of related driving schools begun to increase, but also the United West African Federation The bank also provides special loans to eligible young people in Kolo, which can help them pay the cost of learning a driver's license and then repay it in installments after working. This has also helped many people increase their income by learning to drive a truck.
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"Your Highness the Duke, through negotiations, we have reached an agreement with Sony Corporation, and they will transfer their shares in MGM Holdings."
A phone call from Annika Dawson, CEO of Blue Valley Capital, informed Barron of the news.
After acquiring 20% of MGM Holdings from the Sinclair Family Trust, they also have plans to fully acquire MGM, once one of the eight major Hollywood studios.
However, although MGM Holdings, which controls MGM, the shareholding ratio of the five companies involved in the acquisition was an equal 20%, but in order to take this step, it first needs the support of Sony. After all, they had played a leading role in acquisitions before.
Barron also fully understands Sony's concerns. What they care about is not the future development of MGM. What they value most is nothing more than the 4,100 films and 10,600 TV series in MGM's film library. .
Therefore, Annika, CEO of Blue Valley Capital, went directly to Sony's headquarters and negotiated with them.
Blue Valley Capital promised that if Sony can sell its shares of MGM Holdings to them and support them in completing the acquisition of MGM Pictures, then MGM Pictures will use the next-generation hard disk format In the competition, continue to side with Sony and support the Blu-ray DVD format they launched.
Compared with the time when MGM was acquired last year, the situation of MGM Pictures has gone from bad to worse, and their losses have continued to expand.
As for the latest 007 movie that is regarded as a "life-saving straw" for MGM Pictures - "007: Casino Royale", Sony has already obtained the distribution rights of this movie, and the movie itself is a Sony movie. Filmed in partnership with MGM.
Besides, even if this movie can get good box office, so what? You can't release a 007 movie every year. Even so, such a film and television company cannot live on just one IP, not to mention that Sony has temporarily suspended all other MGM Pictures projects except the 007 and Pink Panther series. The suspension itself is because they are not optimistic about the future performance of this company - they are afraid that the more they shoot, the more losses they will make - it is better to shrink the business and at least reduce the losses...
Therefore, the final agreement is that Blue Valley Capital will acquire Sony's 20% stake in MGM Holdings for US$500 million - this price is compared to Sony's acquisition of MGM Pictures last year. Investment, Sony lost $140 million, but so what? What they care about is the strategic advantage. If they can win the competition in the next-generation video disc format, then this loss is nothing compared to the gains that Sony can get.
After completing this acquisition, Blue Valley Capital will hold 40% of the shares of MGM Holdings, breaking the original balance and becoming the largest shareholder of this holding company.
Next, they will continue to negotiate with the three holding companies to acquire the remaining 60% of the shares.
Now that Blue Valley Capital has occupied a favorable position, I believe that the other three companies will eventually give in. Otherwise, let MGM continue to lose money like this. By then, not only will the initial investment be lost, but MGM Pictures will also lose money. As for the debt of more than 2 billion US dollars, I wonder if you are afraid of it.
Of course, it is of course the best strategy to conduct friendly negotiations without offending those institutions.
itself for investment. It is normal to have profits and losses, and I believe they will be very pragmatic.
