Rebirth of England

In late August, Uniqlo's parent company, Fast Retailing Group, also completed its acquisition of the Primark clothing chain.

At this time, the market value of Fast Retailing Group has reached about 4 billion U.S. dollars, which is a considerable improvement compared to the market value of less than 3 billion U.S. dollars when Global Industrial Investment Fund acquired them.

In this merger, the Primark clothing chain, which has more than 300 stores, was valued at US$2.5 billion (approximately 1.43 billion pounds).

Therefore, after the merger and acquisition of the Primark clothing chain through the issuance of additional shares, Primark became one of the sub-brands of Fast Retailing Group.

In this way, Fast Retailing Group's shareholding ratio has become Global Industrial Investment Fund holding 40% of its shares; Argos Retail Group holds 38.46% of its shares; Yanai Zheng family's shareholding has been reduced to less than 15% …

Fast Retailing Group has also entered the European market through this acquisition of the Primark clothing chain. In the future, they will use Primark's sales data to promote Uniqlo's store opening plan in Europe.

However, the focus of UNIQLO's development below is still the Chinese market - in the future of Barron's previous life, the Chinese market is the market with the second largest number of UNIQLO branches after the Japanese market, and it has contributed the most profits to it. This can also be seen The importance of this market to Uniqlo comes out.

At the same time, Primark will also start to expand in the Asian market, especially the Japanese and Chinese markets, through the channels of Fast Retailing Group.

Another advantage of this merger and acquisition for Fast Retailing Group is that after merging the manufacturing departments of both parties, it will have economies of scale. The cost control of the entire Fast Retailing Group will be better than before, and it will also make them more efficient. Competitive.

After this, Fast Retailing Group has also established a partnership with Argos Retail Group. Their brands, including Uniqlo and Primark, will be launched on Argos Retail Group’s online mall Argos.com, and they will build an online store in France that radiates throughout Europe. The transit warehouse distributes goods for sales on Argos.com and their various branches.

As Argos Retail Group has set its main target in the e-commerce field, they have also begun to invest in laying out a network covering Europe. Entering every country, starting with the transit warehouse and pickup network, coupled with the cooperation with Yingyun Logistics, currently It has been able to cover the most elite areas of Western Europe.

The share of sales through their Argos.com website has also increased from less than 10% initially to more than 25% currently. It can be said that this has contributed greatly to the growth of the Argos retail group's revenue.

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"Currently, the returns from short selling in the foreign exchange market can only be said to be good, and have not yet reached our ideal situation. However, in terms of crude oil futures, it is relatively more satisfactory."

While talking to Barron, Daisy also called up the exchange rate of the euro against the U.S. dollar and the trend of international crude oil prices.

In terms of international crude oil, at the beginning of August, the price of oil had reached the stage of 60 US dollars. By the end of August, it had continued to rise and was about to reach the price of 70 US dollars.

It can be said that this month, the price of international crude oil has been growing steadily, and DS Investment Company, which is long crude oil futures, has also made huge profits as a result.

"The other is the Mars Fund. According to our calculations, we can earn more than US$1 billion in revenue from this withdrawal of revenue sharing."

Speaking of this, Daisy couldn't help but smile on her face. It's no wonder that such a high income also means that her bonus will not be too low.

September is coming soon, which means that the Mars Fund will once again welcome the opening of the investment window.

Last year, the Mars Fund received more than $600 million in revenue sharing, and this year, this number increased to more than $1 billion.

Of course, this also means that the Mars Fund has brought more generous returns to users. The total size of this fund currently exceeds 7 billion US dollars. It is estimated that soon, after the end of this investment window, it will exceed 10 billion US dollars. dollar size.

This time, Barron’s plans to invest the Mars Fund’s income share into the Global Industrial Investment Fund.

To be precise, it is the second phase of the GII Fund.

The previous GII Phase I fund received a total of US$6 billion for investment, including US$1.8 billion of DS Capital’s own funds.

Almost all of these funds have been invested in projects such as Fast Retailing Group, Four Seasons Hotel Group and the acquisition of the London Stock Exchange.

However, Barron also found that in terms of attracting funds, the GII Fund was still relatively poor compared to the later Caesars Fund. The main reason was the participation of funds from the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority. The main reason was GII The fund is not a fixed-income product like the Caesars Fund, but more similar to the Mars Fund, in which DS Capital collects a share of investment income.

In addition to the projects previously invested by the GII Fund, the asset appreciation during this year was not as obvious as that of the Caesars Fund - mainly because the performance of United Energy Group invested by the Caesars Fund was too outstanding, while the GII Fund lacked such " Star Project".

Although Barron knows that in terms of final income, the GII Fund will definitely be higher than the Caesar Fund, but it will take longer to be reflected, and often in investment, people always subconsciously focus on short-term results. .

Although the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority have not said anything about the investment in the GII Fund, it can be seen from the subsequent capital investment that at present, it is the Caesar Fund that is more favored by investment. People are welcome.

Therefore, Barron decided to end the first phase of the GII fund and will not continue to seek investment in the short term, but to establish a new GII fund for the second phase.

The GII Phase II Fund imitates the Caesar Fund and mainly provides customers with 3-5-year fixed income products. The income sharing from the Mars Fund will be mainly used as DS Capital’s own funds and invested in the GII Phase II. in the fund.

However, Barron’s is now fully confident to obtain investment at a lower rate of return. Therefore, in the future, whether it is Caesars Fund or GII’s second-phase fund, its fixed-rate investment products will not have a rate of return. If it is as high as before, it will be set at an annualized fixed income of 8%-10%.

Even at this rate of return, it is very attractive among relatively formal large-scale investment products - of course, it cannot be compared with the "Ponzi scheme" like the Madoff Fund.

But if he really wants to pursue high returns and invest in Madoff, Barron can only give in.

But speaking of it, it is true that Madoff would not absorb all the funds casually. After all, he is also an experienced financial person. The reason why the Madoff fund can last for so long is not because it encountered the subprime mortgage crisis, but maybe it was not that early. Thunderstorms are not without reason.

As we all know, the so-called Ponzi scheme uses the principal of latecomers to pay the interest of earlier investors...

Therefore, for this scam to continue, it is very important to grasp the rhythm of fund absorption.

It's not that the more funds you can "cheat" at once, the better, but the amount of funds that need to be absorbed is like an inverted pyramid. It needs to be increased at a certain pace so that the amount of funds that will be increased later can be maintained. Paying the former interest will not lead to a collapse because the increment is not enough to sustain this high-interest game.

At this point, Madoff has done a very good job. He has been controlling the amount of funds he absorbs, and even made people outside feel that only people with certain qualifications can enter the Madoff Fund, and they all regard those who can be attracted by Madoff. What Daofu "cheated" was regarded as a symbol of his status...

Therefore, from this point of view, the amount of funds absorbed by the Madoff Fund is still very measured. Even if most people know that there is such a high-income fund, it is difficult to squeeze in.

On the contrary, this can prevent other investment funds from being affected in terms of return rate.