Chapter 567 Shorting Thomson

Interestingly, on October 2, when the U.S. stock index continued to rise, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that because the crisis caused by the subprime mortgage market has basically ended, the U.S. economy will continue to develop...

Then on October 9, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high of 14,164 points.

At this time, the stock prices of many companies have reached or are about to reach their highest prices in the past two or three years.

For example, the share price of Thomson Group has risen from approximately US$42.5 when they initially prepared to acquire Reuters Group in May, to nearly US$47!

The market value of Thomson Group has risen from approximately US$27.5 billion at that time to nearly US$30.5 billion, which is more than US$10 billion higher than the market value of SEM Group.

This also means that according to the previous acquisition plan proposed by Thomson Group, their acquisition price for Reuters Group has been increased.

Of course, their current main task is to persuade the relevant regulatory agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom to grant approval in the antitrust investigation of the Thomson Group against the Reuters Group.

In order to achieve this goal, in the recent acquisition plan of Thomson Group, Thomson Group and Reuters Group finally had to "reluctantly part ways"...

They agreed to sell part of the database to address competition concerns from antitrust authorities.

These include Reuters' secondary market brokerage research reports, corporate earnings forecasts and macroeconomic databases, and Thomson's database of basic corporate financial information.

Not only that, Thomson Group and Reuters Group also agreed to transfer the assets, personnel, intellectual property rights and customers supporting the database at the same time, thereby ensuring that the buyer can effectively compete with Thomson-Reuters Group in a short period of time.

It can be said that as Thomson Group gradually makes concessions to regulators, it also means that regulators are more and more likely to pass this acquisition, especially the American regulator - Bloomberg once again disclosed to Barron's , according to the information he received, the relevant officials of the U.S. Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice have praised Thomson Group for this concession, and may become more positive about this acquisition in the future. …

And once the United States passes the antitrust investigation into Thomson Group's acquisition of Reuters Group, then all the pressure will come to the relevant British regulatory agencies.

However, also in early October, Tianhe Capital's funds in Hong Kong also began to short the Thomson Group's stock price on the Toronto Stock Market and the Nasdaq Stock Market.

This time, Tianhe Capital used its automotive and real estate businesses as collateral to obtain a US$1 billion loan from Standard Chartered Bank.

Their Initial Energy Fund (IE Fund) in Hong Kong will use these funds to short the share price of Thomson Group.

As early as September, IE Capital had begun to quietly buy shares of Thomson Group in the secondary market. Because their purchases were very hidden, they did not attract the attention of Thomson Group.

Until October, after Thomson Group's share price exceeded $45, IE Capital began to borrow Thomson Group shares from the market.

On October 10, they tentatively started their first large-scale sell-off. On that day, Thomson Group shares worth more than US$50 million were sold intensively in a short period of time.

Although the market value of the Thomson Group has exceeded US$30 billion at this time, 70% of the shares are controlled by the Thomson family's holding company, and less than 30% of the shares are outstanding on the market...

The IE Fund's first smash hit the Thomson Group's stock price directly from 46.25 US dollars to 45.32, and the stock price fell by more than 2%.

It is actually very abnormal for the stock to fall by 2% almost instantly. Even after the stock index reached its peak, many stocks were falling after the opening of the market today, but stocks like Thomson Group were not involved in negative news. It's still a bit baffling to see this happen all of a sudden.

So when they saw this scene, many people quickly opened Bloomberg News and other media to see if there was any breaking news or negative news that they had ignored...

Of course, short selling is not a one-time deal. After dropping the stock price, IE Capital continued to sell the stock rhythmically.

And in addition, Barron also released some news through the media he controlled...

Of course, it can't be fake news, otherwise the SEC would talk to him on charges of market manipulation.

Some experts appeared in some media that day. Based on some public information about Thomson Group’s acquisition of Reuters Group, they analyzed and concluded that it would be difficult for Thomson Group’s acquisition of Reuters Group to be approved by the market regulatory authorities, otherwise a new The giants are about to emerge, and this industry is bound to become an oligarch's game...

Great attention has been paid to these reports, and there will be no falsehoods. They are completely normal analyses.

It was only at this time that many media released such negative news about Thomson Group's mergers and acquisitions, which had to make some Thomson Group stock holders anxious. In addition, although Thomson Group's stock price had just risen to a high , but there was an obvious decline immediately today, which will also cause some cautious investors to seek safety.

On that day, Thomson Group's stock price closed at $44.87, a drop of nearly 3% from the opening price.

This first day is just a tentative attack by IE Fund.

The next day, before the North American stock market opened, news from England after yesterday's closing came to the market.

An unnamed official from the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) claimed in an interview with reporters that Thomson Group’s acquisition of Reuters Group would be difficult to pass their review based on the principle of fair market competition. The British side does not want a large company that can control the financial consulting industry to emerge, because this means that Pengbo News Agency and the merged company will account for more than 65% of the market share, which in itself is contrary to fairness. Competition matters.

Affected by this news, Thomson Group's share price opened lower, opening at a price below $44 after the Nasdaq market and the Toronto Stock Exchange began trading.

In just one morning, its share price fell to about $42.5, which was close to the share price of Thomson Group in May this year.

It can be said that shorting Thomson Group's stock price is the task of IE Fund this time, but in the entire European and American stock markets, the funds mobilized by Barron have already started a comprehensive short selling of the entire market at this time.

Black Swan Funds have invested most of the funds they obtained in the previous stage into short selling U.S. stocks.

Short selling in the European market has also begun to accelerate.

In France, William Weber Capital finally obtained nearly 2.5 billion euros in gambling agreement income due to the entanglement of NM Rothschild Bank. All these funds went into short selling in the financial industry, including banks. .

Including the entire Europe, DS Group and related funds are also engaging in short selling.

It can be said that the scale of short selling this time is unprecedentedly large. Barron's funds used in all markets exceed 50 billion US dollars!