Chapter 599 The King Behind the Scenes

It is obvious that Barron has long had an idea about Costco. By acquiring this company, Argos Retail Group will be able to extend its tentacles into the North American market, the base of its competitor Amazon.

In addition, Costco also has many stores in Asia and China, but the stores in China are mainly in Taiwan. Costco stores in Taiwan can be said to be one of its most profitable stores in the world.

Costco entered the Chinese mainland very late, and it was not until 2019 that it opened a store in Shanghai. At that time, the store was unprecedentedly popular when it opened, which also left a deep impression on Barron.

The advantage of acquiring Costco is that the company has no controlling shareholder. Therefore, when making an acquisition, Barron only needs to ensure that he holds enough shares and obtains the consent of the company's board of directors. He does not need to "fight" with the family or group that controls the company like acquiring Hermes and other companies.

Similarly, the disadvantage is that it has no controlling shareholder - nearly 70% of Costco's shares are held by institutions, among which The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street, Geode Capital Management, FMR LLC and other institutions with the highest shareholding ratio hold nearly 30% of the company's shares.

Therefore, Barron needs to deal with some of these institutions while buying Costco shares from retail investors in the secondary market.

Currently, Costco's stock price is after $70, which is 32% higher than the same period last year.

However, it will still be affected by the subprime mortgage crisis. This year, Costco's stock price will drop to around $40 at the lowest. Therefore, taking advantage of this general trend, Barron can also absorb a certain proportion of Costco shares through the secondary market.

Moreover, for some institutions, many of their assets were affected during the gradual outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis, and some of them needed funds to remedy.

Under such circumstances, it would not be too difficult to persuade them to sell their Costco shares.

From now on, the fund under Barron's name has begun to absorb Costco shares. This will be a relatively long process to slowly achieve controlling stakes.

Specifically, Costco is the largest membership-based chain warehouse retailer in the United States. Their business model is still very different from the previous stores of Argos Retail Group.

But considering the comprehensive investment returns and the help to Argos' business, Costco can be said to be one of their best acquisition targets.

After all, it is well known that the retail industry in the North American market is highly competitive, and the world's largest retail companies are in North America.

Argos' model is suitable for Europe, but it may not be suitable in North America, not to mention Asia - in the original time and space, Argos' e-commerce exploration into the Chinese market ended in failure.

If Argos Retail Group wants to enter the North American market and develop from scratch, it must be very difficult and will face huge competition - and in the e-commerce field, it also needs to face the pressure of Amazon.

The best option is to expand the market by acquiring Costco, and then use Costco's channels to supplement its e-commerce sector.

Of course, this is also something that needs to be considered later.

...

"Congratulations, Mr. Guanhai, I hope you can win the final victory in this election."

"Thank you for your support, Your Highness."

During this period, Barron also took the time to meet with Ao Guanhai privately.

This year is the election year of the United States, and in early June, Ao Guanhai became the candidate of the Donkey Party in this election in the party election of the Donkey Party.

In this election within the Donkey Party, Ao Guanhai's biggest opponent is Hillary, the wife of the former President Zipperton.

In this party election, Ao Guanhai won 1,762 party representatives, 394 super electoral votes, and a total of 2,156 votes.

Hillary won 1,637 party representatives, 283 super electoral votes, and a total of 1,920 votes.

Because according to the rules, it takes 2,118 votes to win the nomination of the Democratic Party, so Hillary had to admit defeat and chose to withdraw from the election.

And O Guanhai won enough votes and was finally determined as the candidate of the Democratic Party.

It is also worth mentioning that the candidate who participated in the competition of the Democratic Party this time also included the Mei Xizong before Barron's rebirth in his previous life, but he and the other four candidates had fallen behind O Guanhai and Hillary in January this year and chose to withdraw from the competition.

In this election, because Bush Jr. has been re-elected for two terms, O Guanhai's opponent, the candidate of the Elephant Party, was determined to be Arizona Senator John McCain in March this year.

It was mentioned before that during and before the election, the country's economic situation will have a great impact on the election results.

Because of the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis, the public has a lot of complaints about the incumbent Elephant Party. Therefore, from some current survey data, the Donkey Party is still optimistic about this election.

In this meeting between Barron and O'Kane, we can also see from his face that he is still very confident about the upcoming election.

Of course, after O'Kane takes office, the troubles of the subprime mortgage crisis will be his headache...

O'Kane's affection for Barron is not only because Barron has provided him with a considerable amount of funding through certain channels, but also because the media that Barron can influence, including the Sinclair Group, is also a very important voice channel in O'Kane's campaign.

In addition to O'Kane, Barron also took this opportunity to meet with many people, including some Wall Street investors.

For example, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

JPMorgan Chase has just acquired the bankrupt Bear Stearns, and it can be said that it has gained something in this subprime mortgage crisis - this is not only the expansion of JPMorgan Chase's scale, but also the execution of their self-proclaimed responsibility to "save the economy".

Judging from the name of JPMorgan Chase, one of the Wall Street giants is related to the Morgan family.

In fact, there are now two Wall Street giants named "Morgan", namely Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, which are often called "Big Morgan" and "Little Morgan".

Their appearance can be traced back to nearly 80 years ago, and this is also related to the famous "Titanic"...

If someone has ever become the king behind the scenes of America, then the Morgan family is one of the most qualified candidates to be nominated.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the financial capital directly controlled by the Morgan family accounted for 38% of the financial capital in the United States, with a total value of nearly 20 billion US dollars, and there were also 12.5 billion US dollars in insurance assets, accounting for 65% of the insurance industry in the United States.

They once led the feat of saving the American economy-

In October 1907, the stock price of the New York Stock Exchange fell by 50% year-on-year, and many bank and trust company runs occurred.

As a large number of state and local banks and companies went bankrupt, panic spread to the entire country, which was called the Great Panic of 1907.

At that time, the United States had not yet established a central bank system and could not effectively intervene in the market.

J.P. Morgan, the leader of the Morgan family, rescued the market and quickly convened senior executives of major banks and trusts to form a joint consortium with major families including Rockefeller, responsible for allocating inter-bank capital flows to the market to sweep up stocks, effectively curbing the stock price plunge.

With the strong intervention of multiple family consortiums headed by Morgan, the Great Panic ended in less than a month.

However, the American government also began to realize that the power of private consortiums was too strong and began to gradually curb the big families.

This laid the groundwork for the birth of the Federal Reserve five years later...