Chapter 865 Becoming the Target

What Daisy meant by speeding up the process was naturally their acquisition of various high-quality assets...

This process has already started since the last time the Fed launched its quantitative easing policy, which was QE2.

After all, with the Fed and other countries implementing quantitative easing policies, the result is currency depreciation.

If you don't want your wealth to depreciate at the same time, you need to spend the money quickly and exchange it for value-preserving assets, such as real estate, precious metals, and high-quality companies.

Even more radical ones will choose to acquire with debt - it's a simple truth. With the depreciation of the currency, the actual value of the money you borrowed from the bank has actually shrunk by the time you return it, and even if you add the interest you need to pay, you are actually making money.

Of course, the premise is that what you buy with debt is a high-quality asset that can resist currency depreciation.

In terms of discernment in this regard, Barron, as a reborn person, naturally has a natural advantage.

The Fed conducted the second quantitative easing, or QE2, in October last year. What Daisy didn't expect was that less than a year had passed - only 10 months had passed, and the Fed was about to start the third quantitative easing again.

Obviously, it can only mean that the economic recovery in the United States is still not as good as expected. Under pressure, they need to release money for the third time.

However, if you think that this year is the election year in the United States, it is understandable.

At present, the President of the United States, Obama, needs to seek re-election. Naturally, before November, he needs to make the economic performance of the United States better and satisfy the American people.

It can be said that the reason why the Federal Reserve chose to implement quantitative easing policy at this time is a little intriguing, and it is meant to assist Obama's re-election.

Since the last round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve last year, the funds and investment companies controlled by Barron have successively acquired assets including Motorola Mobility, Enel, Alstom, Broadcom, and the ongoing acquisition of Commerzbank...

It can be said that the total funds involved in these asset acquisitions exceeded $100 billion!

In addition to the issuance of additional shares of some companies, the acquisitions include part of the profits from capital market investments, and part of them come from loans and financing from banks and other financial fields.

However, even so, the debt of the industries he owns is still not high, and he can continue to raise funds for subsequent acquisitions through loans and other means.

As long as the acquired assets can maintain their value for a considerable period of time afterwards-in other words, during the process of currency depreciation, the prices of these assets continue to grow, then Barron will make money.

This method is used by many capitals, but not all of them can succeed.

The key point is the choice of acquired assets. After the sky-high acquisition, the company is poorly managed and finally sold at a low price. This is not uncommon in the history of global commercial mergers and acquisitions, and even accounts for the majority in terms of proportion.

It is Barron's vision that ensures that he will not break the capital chain and collapse completely due to the black swan event.

However, when they are acquiring assets, some of Barron's industries have also become targets of acquisition by others.

For example, recently LOMX Group received the acquisition intention of Euronext Group, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, for the London Stock Exchange. Euronext Group is ready to acquire the London Stock Exchange for US$10 billion.

At the end of 2004, Barron completed the acquisition of the London Stock Exchange through the Global Industrial Investment Fund (GII). After that, he acquired the Swedish OMX Group and formed the London-OMX Exchange Group (LOMX Group) through a merger.

LOMX Group later reached an agreement with the Nasdaq Group to hold shares in each other, and after listing on the Nasdaq stock market, it completed the acquisition of the Italian Stock Exchange.

It can be said that up to now, LOMX Group has become the largest exchange group in Europe, but it has not stopped.

In 2010, LOMX Group acquired TMX Group, the parent company of Toronto Stock Exchange, for $3 billion, integrating the largest exchange in Canada into its own system.

In 2011, LOMX Group acquired 60% of the equity of the clearing company London Clearing House at a price of 15 euros per share, expanding its share in the clearing market to the world's leading position.

In the same year, LOMX Group completed the acquisition of London Metal Exchange (LME) at a price of $2 billion, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of LOMX Group, thus greatly enhancing LOMX Group's control over non-ferrous metal trading.

The London Metal Exchange (LME, full name London Metal Exchange) is the world's largest non-ferrous metal exchange. It was established in 1876 and trades copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, nickel and aluminum alloys. The exchange's prices and inventories have an important impact on the production and sales of non-ferrous metals worldwide.

It is worth mentioning that in Barron's previous life, the London Metal Exchange was acquired by Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2012 at a price of nearly 1.4 billion pounds, but now it has been taken by LOMX Group.

To date, the market value of LOMX Exchange Group has exceeded 25 billion US dollars, making it one of the largest exchange groups in the world.

However, what Euronext Group hopes to buy is the core industry of LOMX Exchange Group, the London Stock Exchange. You should know that when GII Fund completed the acquisition of the London Stock Exchange, it only spent less than 1.5 billion pounds...

Of course, the London Stock Exchange is now very different from what it was before. On the one hand, it belongs to LOMX Group. Through continuous acquisitions and equity investment, the London Stock Exchange, as its core industry and located in London, a major financial center in the world, has great integration power.

In addition, after obtaining the right to formulate LIBOR, the position of the London Stock Exchange in the financial field has become increasingly important.

Just after LOMX Group rejected Euronext Group's acquisition offer without hesitation, the other party immediately raised the price again and quoted a price of 12 billion US dollars...

"We have no intention of selling the London Stock Exchange, and we do not think that Euronext Group's offer is in line with the current value of the London Stock Exchange..."

This is what Wayne Macaulay, CEO of LOMX Group, said in an interview.

Wayne Macaulay just took over as CEO of LOMX Group last year, and he led the acquisition of London Clearing House and London Metal Exchange.

In addition, he was also the chief advisor to the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer Darling...

In fact, what Wayne Macaulay did not say in his speech was that they even doubted whether Euronext could pay the $12 billion they proposed.

After all, in Barron's previous life, at the end of this year, when Intercontinental Exchange Group acquired Euronext Group, the offer was only $8.2 billion...