Chapter 374 Getting High

Chapter 374 Getting High

Chapter 374 Getting High
Last year, Fan Wumian took advantage of the time difference and bought some Penguin shares at a low price.

South Africa's Naspers Group is still the largest shareholder of Penguin. Through its subsidiary MIH, it held up to 50% of Penguin's shares at most, until it was partially diluted through financing and listing.

South Africa's Naspers is more Buddhist. It neither interferes with the specific management of the Penguin Group nor intervenes in internal affairs. It just likes to make money without doing anything.

However, if these shares were transferred to Citigroup of the United States, given the nature of the Wall Street capital oligarchs, they would probably not allow Pony Ma to dominate the market alone, which would easily lead to a lot of trouble.

Out of consideration for the possible crisis, Xiao Ma Ge took the initiative to extend an olive branch, and at the same time prevented Fan Wumian from setting up his own business and bypassing the Penguin Group to develop the Myth Game Studio alone.

If other Internet companies were to make games, Pony Ma would not be afraid.

With Penguin's current active user base of over 8000 million and relatively ample cash flow, it is easy for it to incubate hit games.

However, Fan Wumian's personal charm is too great.

When Audition was launched last year, Fan Wumian helped to promote the game, and in just one or two days, it attracted millions of female fans and directly overwhelmed the server several times. Ma Ge is still impressed by it until now.

Upon learning that Penguin was willing to take the initiative to increase the revenue share of the game, Fan Wumian simply replied:
"Okay, then, do you want to sign a supplementary agreement with Dungeon & Fighter? One more thing, I have some spare money recently. The Penguin shares I held before have appreciated in value, and I can continue to borrow money from the bank as collateral. If I can raise about 1 million US dollars, can South Africa's Naspers Group sell me some more shares?"

". Mr. Fan is still rich."

Last year, Pony Ma’s total net worth was only around 19 billion yuan, but it has now risen to more than billion yuan, which is no longer as high as Fan Wumian’s.

After expressing his deepest feelings, Xiao Ma Ge continued with a regretful tone:

"The person who made the decision to sell the shares to you last time resigned from South Africa's Naspers Group due to a major mistake in decision-making at the end of last year. Even if you agree to transfer the shares again, the premium will definitely be very high. Even a 20% premium may not be enough to reach an agreement."

"I don't know the details. You should try to negotiate directly with the major shareholders of their company. What I mean is, if you become a shareholder of MIH, a subsidiary of Naspers Group, it means you indirectly hold Penguin shares."

"Citigroup has also done the same thing recently. There are rumors that it is trying to acquire MIH Investments in a package deal."

Many things were indirectly influenced by Fan Wumian.

Many experiences from past lives may not be 100% correct.

From the perspective of the butterfly effect, if Citigroup, the old American Wall Street oligarch, really acquired MIH and successfully held a large number of penguin stocks and held them for a long time, perhaps it would be able to make hundreds of billions of dollars in the future just from the income from investing in penguin stocks.

Fan Wumian clearly remembered that in his previous life, Citigroup suffered heavy losses during the subprime mortgage crisis. Now that the subprime mortgage crisis has not yet occurred, it is still a global financial oligarch that people can only look up to.

Interestingly.

Some time ago, he saw news on the Internet that mentioned that the Royal Bank of Scotland was trying to offer $1000 billion in the hope of acquiring ABN AMRO.

At that time, he was thinking that if he waited two years before making a move, with the same amount of money, he could probably acquire Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank at the same time, and still have a large amount of money left over, and by the way, he could also buy General Motors, Tesla, SpaceX, Netflix and other companies in a package.

Unfortunately, the timing was wrong.

Now that the Royal Bank of Scotland has made an acquisition offer worth hundreds of billions of dollars, ABN AMRO is surprisingly reluctant to accept it.

In Fan Wumian's eyes, this kind of thing is even more exciting than a movie.

It's just like a few years ago when Time Warner Group merged with Internet company America Online, which was soon followed by the bursting of the Internet bubble, and ended up losing everything.

I didn't know before that Citigroup was in contact with South Africa's Naspers Group.

Fan Wumian's mood was a bit complicated at the moment, mainly because he thought that a big piece of fat meat might be given to those troublemakers for nothing, which made him feel like eating a fly.

It is hard to say how much importance Citigroup attaches to Penguin Stocks.

After all, the general view from the outside world recently is that Penguin Group’s stock price has risen too much and there is already a serious bubble. Moreover, Silicon Valley has no shortage of top Internet companies that are directly facing the global market and, on the surface, have much greater potential than Penguin Group.

The Penguin Group only has some influence in mainland China and cannot completely capture the Asian market, let alone the chance to enter the European and American markets.

Naturally, Fan Wumian's mind began to wander.

Currently, the 28.5% of Penguin shares held by South Africa's Naspers Group have a market value of only more than 8 billion Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to more than million US dollars.

Even if the premium is around US$10 billion, there is still a hundred times profit margin.

Thinking that these shares had the potential to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, Fan Wumian swallowed silently and felt sorry for himself.

The reason is that he really cannot raise that much money in the short term. Even if he gets support from the bank, he must at least prepare $300 million to $400 million in principal.

My mind was full of thoughts about where else I could make money, and I soon thought of Youtube, whose valuation had soared.

If he is lucky enough to find a straightforward buyer, Fan Wumian's 25% stake in YouTube might be sold for around $2 million.

Adding the $1 million he could raise on his own, he could barely raise $3 million.

With the idea of ​​giving it a try, he asked Ma: "If I have 3 million US dollars and get financial support from the bank, do you think Naspers will give priority to selling its Penguin shares to me?"

After hearing this, Brother Xiao Ma was stunned.

I was first amazed at Fan Wumian's boldness and ridiculous appetite, and then I wondered if he was planning to "usurp the throne" and squeeze him out to become the chairman of Penguin Group?

After a few seconds of digestion, Xiao Ma Ge said:

"If our board of directors makes every effort to promote it, and your bid is not lower than that of Citigroup, there should still be a chance. But Naspers Group is only in contact with Citigroup and may not really be willing to sell."

Using all your chips to bet on an uncertain future is called taking risks.

In Fan Wumian's eyes, doing everything possible to acquire the Penguin shares held by South Africa's Naspers Group is called picking up money.

Compared with the initial purchase price, Penguin’s stock price has tripled or quadrupled in more than a year.

If he doesn’t make a move this year, Fan Wumian feels that he won’t be able to afford it in the future.

The current penguin stocks still have extremely high investment value, and the threshold for layout is relatively low.

Just like Youtube, if the "priority financing rights" clause had not been signed early, Fan Wumian's shareholding ratio would have been greatly diluted. Chen Shijun and others did not want to accept his financing first at all, and only treated him as a "spare tire" out of necessity.

For example, for a popular project like Facebook, a group of oligarchs are lining up for financing and are very powerful.

Even if Fan Wumian offered the highest price, he would be excluded by Facebook because he could not provide any help other than funding, such as listing and official policy support.

Penguin Group is different.

As an "old" Internet company that has already been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with its main business concentrated in the Mainland and a high price-to-earnings ratio, it is facing competition from other instant messaging software and is easily overlooked by investors.

To put it bluntly, although people are optimistic about the mainland's economy, they cannot imagine how high it will reach in the future.

It has been settling down for the past few months.

At this moment, Fan Wumian was impulsive again. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that he should give it a try. He told Xiao Ma Ge:

"Since there is an opportunity, let's give it a try. If it really works, I will not interfere with you and everything will remain the same. I would like to ask you to provide me with some information at that time. I don't know much about the internal members of the South African Naspers Group."

Brother Ma couldn't wait to ask, with a surprised tone: "Are you really planning to buy it?"

"Yes, I just have an idea. I'll ask someone to help me plan it later."

After hearing the affirmative answer, Pony Ma didn't know what to say. The management team headed by him began to cash out about 3% of the total share capital since March. It was obvious that they felt the stock price was high and seized the opportunity to put cash in their pockets.

Seeing that the estimated price had tripled or quadrupled, Fan Wumian still wanted to rush in.

Xiao Ma Ge felt that he was a warrior, and he couldn't help but murmur in his heart, suspecting that Fan Wumian was getting too excited and might lose all the profits he made from investing in Penguin stocks in the past year.
In fact, last year the best time to buy Penguin shares was when they fell to a price close to the price on their first day of listing.

But there is no way.

Fan Wumian had no money at that time.

After several attempts at splitting the shares, it finally acquired 10% of the total share capital of Penguin Group, and it still owes the bank a large loan.

Fortunately, as long as the total assets are large enough, liabilities are a small problem. Only by being good at using the bank's money to make money for yourself can you earn more in a short period of time.

If all the 28.5% of Penguin shares were to be acquired, a total of US$10 billion would be required after the premium. Using the shares themselves as collateral, Fan Wumian's credit could lend out about 70%, or about US$7 million. The rest would need to be supplemented by cash from other sources.

That's why he thought that if he raised $300 million to $400 million on his own, he would have a chance to try to take over the penguin shares held by South Africa's Naspers Group.

If that really happened, not to mention becoming the richest man in Hong Kong or the mainland, even if he became the richest man in the world, Fan Wumian would dare to climb up and take a seat.

Faced with such a huge temptation, almost everyone would go crazy, not to mention that this project is so stable.

It is no wonder that as soon as he heard that Citigroup was trying to make a move, he changed his diversification plan and continued to focus on Penguin Group.

Using the excuse of feeling unwell, Fan Wumian took a day off, asking the director of "Detective Chinatown" to shoot other scenes while he stayed in the suite to take care of his business.

Others don't keep track of their credit cards, loans and accounts and don't know how poor they really are.

After Fan Wumian carefully sorted out the calculations, he found that he was even richer than he had imagined.

……

(End of this chapter)