I Become A Noble in England

The acquisition of the Swedish OMX Group by the London Stock Exchange is not that simple.

Although GII Fund and LSE have already communicated with OMX Group on the acquisition, LSE has offered an all-cash acquisition plan of US$3.3 billion, with a 10% premium, and the other party's board of directors is also discussing the offer from LSE.

However, even if the other party agrees to this acquisition, the merger of the London Stock Exchange and the OMX Group, two of the largest exchanges in Europe and which will become the number one exchange in Europe after the completion of the merger, will inevitably be subject to relevant investigations by the European Union and Sweden.

At the same time, this acquisition has definitely become big news and received widespread attention.

After receiving the offer from the London Stock Exchange, the OMX Group does not seem to be in a hurry. After all, after this news came out, there will definitely be other exchanges, such as the German Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq Group, which will be affected and may join the bidding.

Let's not talk about whether they are willing to sell OMX Group. Even if they are willing to sell it, they have to see if there is a higher bid, right?

In this regard, GII Fund and the London Stock Exchange can only wait for further developments.

But they were not in a hurry, because at any time, a pure cash acquisition was always more tempting...

Now, even if Nasdaq or the German Stock Exchange joins the bidding, it is unlikely that they will be able to complete the acquisition with cash. They will probably still acquire in the form of stock, or at most cash plus stock. In the view of OMX Group's shareholders, the future trend of the acquired stocks also needs to be considered.

After all, not all mergers and acquisitions will be successful. It can even be said that among large-scale mergers and acquisitions, a considerable portion of the final results are not ideal.

The second phase of the GII Fund previously raised US$12 billion in funds. After completing the previous acquisition, there is still nearly US$6.5 billion in funds, which is fully capable of supporting this acquisition.

…

"We have basically reached an agreement with Supor in China. We will increase our shareholding in the company to more than 65% by purchasing additional shares from the founder's family and investing in it, so as to initially complete our control over the company..."

Nathan Ellington, CEO of Argos Retail Group, reported to Barron in the company's headquarters conference room:

"This process will be mainly completed by Argos Holdings. We will not only invest in helping them with the standardized transformation, but also merge part of the factory production capacity we invested in Huaxia into Supor. After the integration is completed, not only will the company's technical strength be improved, but their production capacity will also be expanded. The products mainly involve small kitchen appliances..."

"What about the technical aspects?"

"In terms of technology, we have obtained some technical authorizations and technical personnel from Siemens..."

Nathan pushed his glasses and smiled at Barron:

"It is said that Bosch has been negotiating with Siemens to acquire their 50% stake in the Bosch-Siemens joint venture. From then on, Siemens will withdraw from the home appliance industry, and the Siemens brand in this industry will be owned by Bosch-Siemens, which is wholly owned by Bosch."

As early as the 1960s, Bosch and Siemens established a joint venture, Bosch-Siemens, to produce home appliances.

At that time, both parties had certain strengths in the field of home appliances, but relatively speaking, Bosch had a longer development in this field, which was why both parties chose to join forces.

Later, Bosch entered the Chinese market and gradually gained popularity by relying on Siemens' accumulation in China.

Now that Siemens is preparing to withdraw from the home appliance field, Bosch will buy all the shares of the joint venture Bosch-Siemens. From now on, all Siemens home appliances in the world are actually produced by Bosch - in fact, there is no difference, and it is still the original team of Bosch-Siemens that is carrying out production and operation.

However, although the two parties established a joint venture, the two brands, Bosch and Siemens, still competed with each other for a long time.

Now that Siemens is withdrawing from the home appliance field, it naturally hopes to maximize its own interests. So Argos Holdings took the opportunity to obtain a series of patent technology licenses from Siemens in the field of small home appliances, and paid to hire some technical personnel from Siemens to complete the task of helping Supor complete its technological upgrade.

Obtaining the relevant technology from Siemens and being able to upgrade Supor's technology was also the main reason why Supor's founder Su Zengfu agreed to give up control of Supor.

According to the agreement with the family of Su Zengfu, the founder of Supor, after obtaining the controlling stake in Supor in the first phase, as long as Supor achieves its set goals, they will need to sell the remaining shares to Argos Holdings again after one year, so that Argos Holdings can complete the privatization of Supor.

Next, Supor will continue to sell its products under its original brand in China, but in the European and American markets, it will initially sell its products under Argos' own brand.

Small household appliances are one of the most popular categories of goods purchased online by European users. By controlling the production of its own brand, Argos.com can improve its competitiveness and profit margins in the small household appliances category.

"There is also our payment system. We have already cooperated with Klarna Pay to provide services for our online payment. Judging from the current response, users are quite welcoming of this new and faster method."

Just like Alibaba's Alipay and eBay's Paypal in the future, Barron knows that it is very important for e-commerce to have a reliable online payment platform.

Therefore, before this, Digital Future Investment Company, a subsidiary of Caesar Fund, came forward and acquired Klarna, a Swedish startup that was just founded this year.

Klarna supports users to register with email and provide their credit card information. They will conduct a comprehensive credit analysis on users. When users use it to shop, if Klarna's analysis results show that the amount of your purchase is within the credit limit, then the user will obtain the credit, complete the shopping, and receive a bill from Klarna in the form of email later.

Obviously, unlike China's Alipay, an online payment method based on bank transfer, Klarna is more suitable for shopping in Europe and the United States where credit cards are used as payment methods.

But in fact, not all European and American users like this "credit card" purchasing method.

During Klarna's promotional efforts with Argos.com, they received feedback that consumers in countries such as the Netherlands and Germany are the main users of bank transfer payments for e-shopping, perhaps to avoid falling into credit card debt or simply prefer to pay with cash in their existing bank accounts.

Therefore, after changing its name to Klarna Pay, Klarna added support for bank transfer payments.

After continuous improvements in the process of cooperation with Argos.com, Klarna Pay will provide online payment services to users in online payments including Woaw, DailyVedio and O2 Telecom in the future.