Rebirth of England

This started when Boss Ma was preparing to enter the C2C field.

As early as the end of 2002, Boss Ma, who had made a lot of achievements in the B2B field, decided to lead Alibaba, whose main business was still B2B at that time, into C2C.

But at that time eBay, China's earliest C2C company, had been developing in the market for more than four years and had just received an investment of US$30 million from eBay.

Faced with such opponents and unknown market prospects, Boss Ma's attempt in this new field is very dangerous and requires a large investment of funds. Otherwise, if he is not careful, Alibaba's B2B business, which has just gained a foothold, will be dragged down.

At that time, in order to avoid risks, I happened to receive a US$20 million investment from DS Capital. I found that Barron, the Duke from England, was a very good big "financier", with more money and less work, so I followed up with Alibaba Company and DS Capital jointly invested to create Taobao. DS Capital independently invested US$5 million for this purpose and holds 25% of Taobao's shares. The remaining shares are held by Alibaba.

In May last year, Taobao went online.

In October, Alipay was launched.

In order to attract resources from buyers and sellers, Boss Ma gave Taobao a “three-year free” promise.

In a situation where cash can only go out but not come in, if Taobao does not have continued back-up resource support, the initial funds will not be able to survive the wealthy eBay.

Although Alibaba has received financing before, the development of B2B business itself still requires investment. At this time, this part of the business is Alibaba's basic market.

Although Taobao quickly made progress in market share, this success was based on the premise that Taobao was free and eBay-supported eBay charged fees. Alibaba has been under financial pressure.

Without money, Taobao will find it difficult to sustain whether it is Ant-like advertising or exemption from transaction fees.

Therefore, in the last financing, in addition to Rich23 Capital investing US$100 million in Alibaba, it also invested an additional US$50 million in Taobao and Alipay, which was a sub-business of Taobao at this time.

Rich23 Capital currently holds about 33.3% of Taobao's shares, and DS Holdings holds about 16.7% of Taobao's shares. Together, they hold exactly 50% of Taobao's shares, and the remaining shares belong to Alibaba.

Similarly, the premise for Boss Ma to accept Barron's investment and let him hold such a proportion of shares is that he will hand over the voting rights corresponding to Taobao shares to Boss Ma just as financial Investment does not involve participation in company management decisions.

This is also the reason why after Liu Xiping took office as the vice president of Rich23 Capital, he first went to Hangzhou, which is not far from Shanghai, to visit Boss Ma.

After all, Liu Yanping will mainly need to do the daily maintenance of the relationship with the Alibaba company and Taobao they invested in in the future.

After visiting Boss Ma, Liu Yanping's next stop will be to Shenzhen City to meet Pony from Penguin Company.

After this meeting, he will go to Hong Kong to set up Rich Capital's Asia-Pacific headquarters.

…

Barron's private plane has left Shanghai and flew back to London.

There, the Gulfstream G450 will pick up Bonnie, the Bute couple and other members of the Bute family, and first send them to the Caribbean - Jenny Bute, Viscount Bute's sister, and John Smith of the Sinclair family. The wedding was held on a small island in the Caribbean.

These people will set off first, and then the Gulfstream G450 will return to Shanghai to pick up Barron.

The reason for this arrangement is that during this time, Barron still has a guest who needs to meet in Shanghai.

The other party is Badr Mohammed Elsalad, the president of the Kuwait Investment Authority.

News came from Daisy, who stayed in Riyadh to negotiate investments with the Middle Eastern tycoons. In the hands of those tycoons, Athena Fund received more than 700 million U.S. dollars in investment. This made the total size of Athena Fund exceed 2 billion US dollars.

There are also many local tycoons who are also interested in the Mars Fund, but this fund has not yet opened its investment window. It will take more than two months in September before it can start accepting investments again - in the future, the Mars Fund will only open once a year in September. Fund Purchases and Redemptions.

This time, Badr did not fly from Kuwait to the capital city to meet Barron. During the initial chat, Barron learned that the Prime Minister of Kuwait would visit China at the beginning of next month.

Therefore, as Kuwait's sovereign fund, the Kuwait Investment Authority will negotiate and prepare in advance with China on some economic cooperation and investment.

This includes the application of the two parties to register a joint venture investment company in China - Kuwait China Investment Company.

After approval by the board of directors, the Kuwait Investment Authority agreed to participate in the new industrial investment fund project to be established by Barron.

This meeting between the two parties is to further determine some key contents of this fund.

In addition to the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which received the news, also expressed great interest in this fund and hopes to participate.

When he originally proposed this industrial fund plan, Barron's purpose was to use the funds of Middle Eastern tycoons to invest in industries, thereby making up for the regret that his current amount of funds was not enough to invest in all the industries he planned for the future. Can gain certain influence in many important industries.

Therefore, he has no objection to the addition of more funds.

In any case, this fund will eventually be controlled by him. Other investors, including the sovereign funds of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, can share the profits with them. As for the control of these industries, it still belongs to Barron himself.

In addition, this industrial investment fund also plays a very important role, that is, it can use part of the funds to invest in Colo, including some of its industries and infrastructure, thereby accelerating local development.

Anyway, as long as the final income of this fund is enough to satisfy those investors, they will not have any big opinions on where to invest.

At the end of the day, making money for them is the most important thing.

In the end, before Barron left the capital, the Saudi Arabian Mutual Investment Fund, which later arrived in the capital, and with the participation of Barron's investment team, finally determined the creation of a new investment fund named Global Industrial Investment Fund. .

The Global Industrial Investment Fund (GII Fund) has an initial capital scale of US$6 billion, of which DS Capital will bear US$1.8 billion with its own funds, and the Kuwait Investment Authority and the Saudi Public Investment Fund will each invest US$2.1 billion. , complete the fund raising.

These funds will be transferred to the special account of Standard Chartered Bank, the custodian bank of the funds, within one month.

The investment by the Kuwait Investment Authority and the Saudi Public Investment Fund has an initial lock-in period of 5 years, which means that they can only recover the investment after 5 years at the earliest. Otherwise, a certain percentage of fees will be deducted for early recovery.

This is also because Barron’s provides principal protection for investors in GII funds during the first investment lock-up period, which gives these two sovereign funds the confidence to choose a five-year lock-in period.

Well, five years later it will be 2009, which will not affect the bargain hunting in the subprime mortgage crisis.

As for the fund's fees and the manager's income sharing, it is generally as mentioned before. The average annual income below 15% is free of management fees. The higher the rate of return, the higher the sharing mechanism...