Chapter 822 Battery Production Center
By the beginning of September, Barron left America and returned to London.
When he arrived in London, Alstom Group CEO Bo Kelong came from France to London to meet with Barron.
The GII Fund has reached an agreement to acquire Alstom. As for the EU, the acquisition of Alstom by the GII Fund itself does not involve the merger of the two companies. It is simply an acquisition. Therefore, there is no antitrust problem, and the acquisition was quickly approved.
Now Bo Kelong continues to serve as the CEO of Alstom Group. With the injection of funds from the GII Fund, he will make certain adjustments to the Alstom Group.
However, when meeting with Barron, the main topic they talked about was the thorough review of the Alstom Group.
This is also Barron's preventive measure to prevent Alstom from repeating the same mistakes. In the original time and space, the reason why Alstom was targeted by the United States, in addition to "assisting" General Electric's acquisition of the company, the main reason is, of course, that Alstom's business posed a threat to related industries in the United States.
Although Alstom has been acquired by the GII Fund, it has avoided the fate of being taken over by General Electric.
But Alstom still poses a threat to related industries in the United States. Therefore, it cannot be said that Alstom is safe now. Even Baron's other industries are inevitably investigated by the CIA before this. He cannot be lucky with Alstom and think that the United States will let this company go.
Of course, it is inevitable in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to get some overseas orders through private transactions.
As mentioned before, those multinational companies do this. If you don't do this, the result can only be the loss of some large orders.
But even so, it is necessary to avoid some of Alstom's actions from entering the scope of the United States' "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act".
Now that Alstom has been acquired by the GII Fund, it is about to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, but according to the provisions of the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act", even if you conduct these actions through American branches, banks and related institutions, you will be subject to the long-arm jurisdiction of the United States.
Therefore, the significance of this review is to first find out whether some of the previous "private transactions" involve companies and institutions that can be "governed" by the "Foreign Corruption Act" - in the original time and space, Alstom's vice president was detained by the United States. One of them was that in 2003, Alstom's vice president Pierucci bribed Indonesian congressmen and officials of the National Power Company through "middlemen" and successfully bid for the power plant project in the Tarahan area of Sumatra and the Phase 5 project of the Tamsui Estuary Power Plant near Jakarta.
At that time, obtaining international market projects through middlemen was a permitted and most common way. Many large multinational companies, including Alstom, have adopted similar methods.
But the key is that this transaction involved an American branch of Alstom, so the United States caught the handle and cited the "Foreign Corruption Act" to arrest Pierucci...
So, this time Alstom's internal review is to screen out such past transactions and make remedies.
In addition, it is strictly stipulated that similar transactions of Alstom in the future shall not be conducted in US dollars (the use of US dollars will involve banks or financial institutions in the United States, which is also within the scope of the "Foreign Corruption Act"), nor shall they be conducted through any company or institution related to the United States...
For Barron, the more favorable point is that through the development of local financial institutions including the United Bank of Africa in Colo, its related business will not only be limited to the African region, but will also expand to Asia, Europe and other places. Therefore, this will also provide a safer and less likely to be strictly regulated by the United States for many of their transactions.
This is also a very important role of the regional financial center-for example, in Barron's previous life, he knew that if a film and television company, or a company related to a signed internet celebrity, had a close relationship with a company established by Huaxia HK, then there was a very high probability that these companies would be involved in money laundering...
This is an illegal transaction that took advantage of the convenience of Huaxia HK's financial center.
It can be said that Alstom's decline to this point today is not without reason. In addition to bad luck, its internal management does have some problems.
But similarly, the reason why Barron took great pains to acquire it is that it also has corresponding value. In terms of technology, Alstom also has its own technical reserves in the fields of power and gas turbines.
Then Bo Kelong's next very important task is to reorganize Alstom's business and develop it according to the route set by Barron for Alstom.
After all, although he was engaged in the financial industry in his previous life, it also involved some corporate mergers and acquisitions. At the beginning, a domestic power company in China once hired their department for consultation when it was acquiring overseas.
Therefore, although Barron is a complete layman in the specific technical aspects of these industries, he still knows which fields have development potential in ten years.
And these are what Alstom needs most now.
…
On September 15, the Frankfurt Motor Show began.
Germany is the first place in the world to hold international auto shows. The Frankfurt Motor Show was formerly known as the Berlin Motor Show. It was founded in 1897 and moved to Frankfurt in 1951. It is held every year and cars and commercial vehicles are on display in rotation.
The Frankfurt Motor Show is the world's largest auto show and is known as the "Auto Olympics".
At this year's Frankfurt Motor Show, a dedicated exhibition hall was set up for the first time to display electric vehicles, which means that the organizer will support and deepen the promotion and use of electric vehicles around the world.
Following the launch of the electric supercar Concept One at last year's Shanghai World Expo, the Nevera 11, a new electric supercar launched by Rimac Automobili and Aston Martin, also made its debut at this auto show and received great attention.
In addition to the improved performance of the Nevera 11 compared with the Concept One, the most important point is that the battery used in the Nevera 11 is manufactured by the British Automobile Group.
At the beginning of this year, the British Automobile Group acquired a lithium battery manufacturing plant in England from the Japanese Automotive Energy Supply Company (AESC) and established its own battery production center based on this.
AESC is a lithium-ion battery company jointly established by Nissan and NEC in 2007 specifically for electric vehicles. A lithium manganate battery they produced was used in Nissan's Nissan Leaf car last year. This car later became a Become the world's single pure electric vehicle sales champion.
Their battery production plant in England is located in Sunderland, northeast England. Based on the research results of the joint R\u0026D center between British Auto Group and Tesla, they established the British Auto Group after acquiring this battery factory. The first battery production center in China, the performance of the lithium batteries produced by the company is still relatively good at present. After being used on the Nevera 11 prototype car, after a long period of experiments, the results are still very satisfactory.
After using their own batteries and battery pack technology, the Nevera 11's full-charge cruising range has been significantly improved compared to the Concept One.
In addition to supplying batteries for the Never 11, the Sunderland battery production center will also provide batteries for Jaguar's upcoming all-electric sedan.
This will also be the first electric car produced by the British Automobile Group and is expected to be sold in the European market starting next year.
This Jaguar model, named TYPE, is a four-door coupe. Its pure electric version will be launched at the end of 2012 and is expected to sell for US$95,000-100,000, slightly higher than the Tesla Model S. .
