Chapter 570 The dust has settled

The final rejection by the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is like the Sword of Damocles that has been hanging over this acquisition, and it has finally fallen.

What followed was the news that after learning that the merger between Thomson Group and Reuters Group was hopeless, Thomson Group's stock price fell rapidly again, falling by nearly 10% that day!

What is now facing Thomson Group, in addition to accepting this result, is to stabilize their stock price...

But before them, a wave of funds had already begun to enter the stock market and began to silently absorb the stocks that were sold.

So under such circumstances, the downward trend of Thomson Group's stock price gradually eased and rebounded to a certain extent. In the end, their stock price returned to about $35, which stopped the sharp fluctuations and stabilized.

This price has fallen by more than 25% compared to the peak share price of Thomson Group in early October.

There is no doubt that the funds that are ahead of Thomson Group in "protecting the market" come from IE funds.

They had aggressively shorted the Thomson Group's stock price before and borrowed a large amount of Thomson Group's shares from the market. Now that the action is nearly completed, they finally need to buy it back from the market at a low price and return it to the brokers.

In this short-selling operation, the IE Fund used a total of about 10 US dollars of funds. After the final inventory, the profit exceeded 200 million US dollars...

It doesn't seem like much. The main reason is that although the entire market is generally in a downward channel, in order to cause Thomson Group's stock to fall more sharply, IE funds often need to act as the leader, through a large number of Sell ​​stocks and make breakthroughs at some pressured prices, and there are also "protection" funds from the Thomson family and Thomson Group. In the process of these battles and back-and-forth buying and selling, the friction costs are also considerable. of.

But no matter what, at least with the help of the general trend, they made profits and successfully closed their positions, instead of being squeezed short and causing losses after the Thomson Group entered the market with a larger amount of funds. The result was still OK

And more importantly, this time's short selling has exercised HK's IE fund team - although they have done similar operations before, they have no experience in operating such a large amount of funds.

After that, IE Fund can use the existing more than 1.2 billion US dollars to join in the short selling of the entire market.

This time there is no specific task like shorting the Thomson Group. If they need to take on the role of a leader, their profits will also be improved.

…

Just after the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) first rejected Thomson Group's acquisition of Reuters Group, the relevant agencies in the United States also rejected this time the next day, November 1. The acquisition determined that Thomson Group’s acquisition of Reuters Group would violate relevant “antitrust” regulations.

So after the merger with Thomson Group was hopeless, Reuters Group had only one option left, and that was SEM Group.

It's not that they can't give up being acquired and continue to develop independently.

However, the board of directors of Reuters Group also understands that the current share price of Reuters Group has fallen much lower than that of Thomson Group after the antitrust agency rejected the acquisition. The big reason is that although the two cannot be merged, the market has previously set off The optimism has been hit, but the market still understands that Reuters Group and SEM Group are such a choice.

Although being acquired by SEM Group is not as good as choosing Thomson Group in terms of synergies and overall future scale, it is still a wise choice - after all, the market value of SEM Group, although similar to Reuters Group, is far less than that of Thomson Group , but the DS Group behind it is still very powerful.

If Reuters Group continues to reject SEM Group, there is no doubt that they will undermine the market's last optimism about it and cause a panic drop in Reuters Group's stock price. Under the current economic situation, this is definitely not a wise choice. .

You must know that whether the Reuters Group is sold to Thomson Group or SEM Group, since they have accepted the acquisition, the shareholders on the board of directors are most concerned about how to sell their Reuters Group shares at the best price. Rather than the future of Reuters Group or any of their "five core principles" - that is what Reuters Founders AG considers.

The reason why they were more supportive of the Thomson Group's acquisition plan before was because in addition to cash, they believed that the shares of the new company exchanged for the shares of the merged Thomson-Reuters Group might be more valuable.

Therefore, after Thomson Group's acquisition of Reuters Group is no longer possible, they would not mind agreeing to the other party's acquisition if they can get a satisfactory bid from SEM Group.

Under such circumstances, Reuters Group began acquisition negotiations with SEM Group - this was in May of this year. The two parties had contact. Later, after the Thomson Group broke out, the two parties once again touched upon a substantive acquisition. Negotiation of plans.

And before this negotiation between Reuters Group and SEM Group...

On October 31, the British Treasury, the Bank of England and the British Financial Services Authority finalized the acquisition plan of the institutions and consortiums interested in acquiring Northrock Bank, including Standard Chartered Bank and DS Group. acquisition plan and announced the results.

This also means that Standard Chartered Bank can start the acquisition process of Northen Rock Bank from now on.

According to the acquisition plan submitted by Standard Chartered Bank, they will acquire 100% of the shares of Northrock Bank, whose market value has dropped to less than 300 million pounds at this time, for a total price of 500 million pounds, completing the privatization of this bank. .

In addition, Standard Chartered Bank promised that their consortium will return to the Bank of England up to 25 billion pounds of borrowings and interest that they had previously injected into Northrone Bank within one month after completing the acquisition of Northerrode Bank.

It can be said that what enabled Standard Chartered Bank to win the approval of the British government in the competition with the Virgin Group, the consortium led by Olivant and more than a dozen companies and consortia including Paul Thompson was their plan to immediately return all 250 The promise of 100 million pounds and interest will allow the government to immediately withdraw from the Northrock Bank incident without causing subsequent negative impacts.

As for the fact that they acquired all the shares of Northrock Bank for 500 million pounds and completed the privatization...

In fact, the board of directors of Northrock Bank at the time was somewhat dissatisfied with the price - although calculated based on Northrock Bank's share price at this time, the bank's market value was less than 300 million pounds, but their board of directors believed that, The current stock price of Northrock Bank is completely unable to realize their actual value at this time. In fact, it was affected by the previous run event and the stock price was greatly underestimated.

In particular, the Hall family, the major shareholder of Northrock Bank, once expressed dissatisfaction with this.

But there is no way. The British government is very tough on this. Finance Minister Darling once directly declared to the board of directors of Northrock Bank:

"You have only two choices, one is to accept the acquisition, the other is to nationalize the bank. Unless the country's 25 billion borrowings and interest can be immediately returned, we will not allow the bank owners who have endangered the entire country's financial order to Although he was able to escape punishment after receiving rescue, the investigation of this incident is still not over!”

His meaning is very clear. The board of directors of Northrock Bank will definitely not be able to return the 25 billion pounds of borrowings and interest. So whether they are acquired or the bank is nationalized, their outcome will be the same.

On the contrary, if they are acquired, they can still get some money back. If the bank is nationalized, the government will strictly regulate it and convert 25 billion pounds of debt into bank shares. I believe they will not get much advantage in this, but on the contrary. The original shares will be diluted to almost no sense of existence and become a "marginal person"...

To put it bluntly, you have messed up and need us to help you with money. If it still affects the "normalization" of Northron Rock Bank, then don't think that we are wrong. North Rock Bank was operating before. We have been held accountable for the problems in the investigation, but our investigation is not over yet. Do you think we dare not arrest a few people?

Faced with such a situation, what can those shareholders do?

At least Standard Chartered Bank is willing to spend 500 million pounds to acquire their shares...