Rebirth of England

On February 15, just as Barron was on the plane returning to Melbourne from California, he got a piece of news.

The night before, David Smith, who had been nursing in the hospital, died due to the negligence of the nursing staff and the failure of the first aid equipment.

According to an investigation by the American police, the caregiver who cared for him that day was a drug addict. When the police found him, he had already died of an overdose.

The accident was ultimately determined to be negligent death and there was no other suspicion.

In this regard, David Smith's wife, children, and other brothers are not without doubts, but the police have reached a conclusion and there is nothing further to investigate, so they can only stop here.

After David Smith's death, because his two children were under the age of 18, one vote in the family trust was temporarily inherited by his widow Sally Smith, and the other vote went to Julian Sinclair. Smith's widow, John Smith's biological mother.

In this way, the "current three siblings" alliance on John Smith's side received four votes from the family trust and gained control of the Sinclair Group shares they held.

Under such circumstances, the Sinclair Family Trust signed an agreement with Blue Valley Capital to sell their 20% stake in MGM Holdings to the other party for US$450 million - although last year When they participated in the acquisition of MGM, they spent US$540 million to obtain these shares and the rights to play some of the films in the MGM film library. But now they would rather lose some money and need to resolve this part of the mortgaged shares. crisis.

After receiving $450 million, the Sinclair Family Trust can return the Bank of New York Mellon to get back their mortgaged Sinclair Group shares.

At the same time, shareholders of Sinclair Group such as DS Capital and IC Capital stated that they will purchase a total of US$250 million worth of Sinclair Group's convertible bonds. This part of the funds obtained by the company will be used to integrate the company's business and make corresponding adjustments. Investment - It is currently disclosed that Sinclair Group will acquire an Internet company with exclusive technology in the field of big data to increase their advertising business revenue.

After this news was revealed, Sinclair Group's stock price finally rose for the first time after more than two months of decline. A few days later, the stock price stood at $22.5 and gradually stabilized.

As for Blue Valley Capital, after buying 20% ​​of MGM shares from the Sinclair Family Trust, no further action was taken.

Their main job currently is to help with film production for Summit Entertainment and Marvel Studios.

At this time in the United States, in addition to Woaw Technology's pre-IPO road show, in accordance with the agreement with the Nasdaq Group, the LOMX Group has also started the process of listing on the Nasdaq.

At the same time, Nasdaq Group will also be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

This time, LOMX Group will issue new shares accounting for 15% of the total share capital after the issuance and conduct a public sale. The funds obtained will mainly be used to acquire the Italian exchange.

Of course, although the two parties have reached an agreement on the price for LOMX Group's acquisition of the Italian exchange, they still need to wait for the antitrust review by the EU and Italy to pass.

LOMX Group has been actively communicating with the other party and promised that after the acquisition is completed, the Italian exchange's business will still comply with relevant local and EU regulations and be supervised by regulatory agencies.

It is expected that by around May this year, after the LOMX Group completes its listing on Nasdaq, their acquisition of the Italian Exchange should have results.

For this IPO, the issue price of LOMX Group has been temporarily set in the range of 4.75-5 US dollars. At this time, the total share capital of LOMX Group is 1.7 billion shares, plus the 300 million new shares that will be publicly issued, the total amount after the IPO is listed. The share capital is 2 billion shares.

Based on the issue price of US$5, the market value of LOMX Group will reach US$10 billion after listing.

It can be said that this year, many companies under Barron's will start to go public one after another. In April, companies including O2 Telecom and Argos Retail Group will also start the listing process. These two companies, will choose the London Stock Exchange for listing.

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By the time Barron and the others returned to London, it was already March.

After this period of training in Australia, it can be clearly seen that Bonnie's complexion has improved a lot.

In less than two months, her due date will come, so she needs to pay close attention to the next step and start waiting for the baby in London with peace of mind.

Barron went to the O2 Tower in King's Cross.

O2 Telecom will start the IPO listing process next month. In order to obtain a satisfactory stock price, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before that.

After acquiring Czech Telecom, O2 Telecom began to enter the Eastern European market and developed rapidly there.

So far, O2 Telecom has become one of the largest mobile operators in Europe, with a total of more than 40 million European users - including approximately 17 million users in the British market, and more than 15 million users in the Irish, French and German markets combined. The Eastern European market, dominated by the Czech Republic, has about 8 million users...

Especially in the French and German markets, O2 Telecom took advantage of the increasingly complete mobile and broadband networks there and through low-cost family package strategies, it can be said that they killed their local mobile operators and directly reduced their average tariffs. A big chunk.

For this reason, some operators even accused O2 Telecom of "low-price dumping". However, O2 Telecom counterattacked with the moral high ground of "everything is for consumers", which actually enhanced O2 Telecom's image in the minds of the public.

Taking advantage of the current huge user base, O2 Telecom not only pays for communication costs, but also uses Honor Electronics and other Chinese mobile phone manufacturers - such as Huaxia Electronics, which has acquired the Philips brand - to customize mobile phones and sell them to consumers, thus gaining a A lot of income.

In the earliest days, O2 Telecom issued the first tranche of corporate bonds with a total price of 1 billion pounds and an annual interest rate of 3.5% to the public. As of now, through their profit income, these corporate bonds have been fully paid off after more than two years... …

Compared with the first two years after being acquired by DS Capital, O2 Telecom's financial data has greatly improved in the previous year.

At this time, they still have a trump card in their hands, which is the exclusive sales right of Apple's iPhone.

The research and development project for the first-generation iPhone began in 2004, when Apple convened more than 1,000 internal employees to form a highly confidential team code-named "Project Purple."

This team is composed of experts from multiple fields such as hardware, software, and design. They are separated in different office areas, and even the company's senior cadres do not know what they are doing.

The original idea of ​​Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the time was to develop a tablet computer similar to the iPad, but later he changed his mind and decided to enter the field of smartphones.

In order to develop a product that can subvert the traditional mobile phone market, Apple has secretly cooperated with the American operator AT\u0026T.

AT\u0026T invested money in the iPhone project and gave Apple great freedom to develop iPhone hardware and software.

In exchange, Apple guaranteed that within four years, iPhones in the U.S. market would be sold exclusively by AT\u0026T.

As mentioned before, in European and American countries, the sale of mobile phones is different from that in China. Generally, users sign a network agreement with an operator first, and then choose to purchase the contracted mobile phone equipment through the operator.

In Barron's previous life, AT\u0026T's cooperation with Apple reaped huge rewards.

In the early years after the iPhone was launched, AT\u0026T once had the upper hand in competition with its rival, Verizon, one of the largest mobile operators in the United States, through its exclusive sales contract.

O2 Telecom did not miss this opportunity. Last year, O2 Telecom CEO Berry Trelles personally went to the United States to meet with Steve Jobs.

They provided a two-year, totaling US$100 million in funding for Apple's development plan for the iPhone code-named "Purple 2", thereby gaining access to companies including those from the UK, France, Germany and the Czech Republic that have already entered the market. iPhone exclusive sales agreement.

Through this agreement, O2 Telecom will be able to obtain the exclusive sales rights for iPhones and related mobile devices in these markets after Apple's iPhone is launched in the future.

It is conceivable that with this exclusive sales right, O2 Telecom will usher in more rapid development in these markets.

Of course, these effects will have to wait until a year later, and the upcoming IPO of O2 Telecom is also attracting much attention.