Chapter 709 Absolute Control

October 18th is Barron’s birthday.

Prior to this day, Caesars Fund finally reached an agreement with the French Vivendi Group. They will complete the acquisition of 61% of Activision Blizzard shares held by Vivendi Group for US$7.5 billion.

This price represents a premium of approximately 13% to Activision Blizzard’s market value at this time and is slightly lower than the US$8.1 billion previously requested by Vivendi Group.

This is also one of the results of the negotiations between Caesars Fund and Vivendi Group during this period.

In addition, before this, Caesar Fund has also absorbed approximately 5% of Activision Blizzard’s shares through the secondary market. Activision Blizzard is a listed company. After the stock price fell during the subprime mortgage crisis, due to the release of "World of Warcraft" With stable performance, their stock prices have risen considerably.

In this way, after completing the acquisition agreement with Wangdi Group, Caesars Fund will hold approximately 66% of Activision Blizzard's shares, which also means that as long as they acquire a few more shares, they can complete the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Absolutely a controlling stake.

By that time, Caesars Fund will have almost all control over Activision Blizzard, the world's top gaming company.

Of course, the Caesar Fund itself is mainly focused on investment and will not be deeply involved in Activision Blizzard's operations. At most, it will only provide some opinions.

Therefore, before this, they had already had in-depth communication with Activision Blizzard's management and reached a tacit understanding with them - after the acquisition, Caesars Fund would not interfere too much in the company's operations in the short term.

Although Barron knows that the future management of Activision Blizzard is not very satisfactory, and there are also some criticisms.

But his acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a layout for the game industry. He does not believe that if he runs the company personally, he will do better than the current management.

Besides, he simply doesn’t have that much energy to do this. He owns so many industries, and if he does it all, he won’t have that much time and energy even if he doesn’t eat or drink.

Therefore, it is better to let Activision Blizzard maintain its original operations, as long as Caesars Fund does appropriate supervision.

"The management of Activision Blizzard once intended to acquire the shares of Activision Blizzard held by Vivendi Group through MBO. However, because Vivendi Group's asking price is too high, and at this stage, the banking syndicates are very cautious. After the evaluation, everyone thought that this financing was too risky, so it was not successful..."

Caesar Fund CEO Pat Friedman told Barron's.

The so-called MBO refers to Management Buy-Outs (MBO).

That is, the managers and management of the target company use the raised capital to purchase the company's shares to achieve changes in the company's ownership structure, control structure and asset structure, and to realize that the managers lead the reorganization as owners and operators. A kind of acquisition behavior in which the company obtains expected returns from its property rights.

To put it bluntly, it is a way for the company's managers to obtain funds through some financing methods, acquire shares of the company, and thereby gain control of the company.

The reason why they did this was because the management of Activision Blizzard and the major shareholder Vivendi Group had differences in the company's operations before, so they hoped to acquire the other party's shares, thereby making Vivendi Group Out.

However, although their MBO was unsuccessful, after Caesars Fund acquired the shares of Activision Blizzard held by Vivendi Group, it replaced Vivendi Group as the controlling shareholder of Activision Blizzard.

The Caesars Fund seems to be different from the Vivendi Group. They do not have much control over Activision Blizzard's operations, but instead hand over most of their power to the company's management.

Therefore, this result is also very satisfactory to Activision Blizzard's management.

…

Now that Barron has more women, the only thing is that he will be busier on birthdays or various festivals - not only him, but also Junning Chang, as Barron's personal assistant, will also be busy.

If it were just a "canary", his assistant could handle it and just arrange some gifts.

But there are still many women with whom he has a closer relationship that require him to spend time and energy to deal with.

But no matter what, Barron will always leave the most important time to his wife Bonnie... who is now his ex-wife.

Unconsciously, it has been more than 7 years since he came to this world, and Barron has also reached the age of 30.

In addition to the changes in status and wealth, and the calm temperament of a superior person developed as a result, Barron's appearance still does not seem to have changed much, and he still maintains his youthful state and perfect figure.

However, in order to better match his current status, Barron also began to grow a beard, which gave him a more mature and elegant feel.

George Cavendish is now three and a half years old. Compared to his younger brother Richard Cavendish, he looks like a little adult. His face is as cute as an angel. Anyone can look at it. I almost wanted to pinch his cheek.

At this time, he was looking expectantly at the birthday cake on the table, congratulating his father Barron on his birthday in a childish voice.

Bonnie, on the other hand, held her youngest son Richard in her arms and stared at the scene in front of her, her eyes filled with happiness.

Little Richard babbled something and stretched his little hand toward the cake. Bonnie pulled him back into her arms lovingly and kissed him on the face.

…

At the same time in Paris, in a magnificent mansion, the atmosphere was not as warm as Barron's home. Instead, it seemed to be repressed everywhere.

"I want to know how it happened."

Benjamin Rothschild said expressionlessly, looking at his men in front of him.

"Sir, we are investigating..."

"Are we starting the investigation now?"

Benjamin suppressed his anger and asked:

"What's wrong with the bank's regulatory system? Why didn't we find such a big loss until that bastard disappeared!"

"Then, the trader named Pete used fake accounts to deceive the regulators, and this kind of thing we occasionally do when we are doing some... transactions, so..."

"Bang", Benjamin grabbed the cup on the table and threw it to the ground, gritting his teeth and asked:

"So our risk control system is useless? Any trader can cause us a loss of more than 3 billion euros?!"

"Sir, I promise to find Pete and thoroughly investigate the whole thing..."

"This must be done. In addition, I also need to know the specific losses, and I need to review all investments of the entire NM Rothschild Bank. I don't want this kind of thing to happen again..."

Benjamin looked at the other party coldly and said:

"We must know whether this is an accident or premeditated!"