Chapter 628 Final Redemption (1)

  Soros's guess is not wrong, there are indeed organizations that have expressed enough interest in Raymond Brothers. Unlike Bank of America being forcibly "apportioned" by the government, this consortium has long had attempts and ambitions to expand the US market, and entering the US investment banking industry is just a small step in their strategy.

  Lehman Brothers is this way into the sight of Barclays Bank.

As the oldest bank in the United Kingdom, Barclays Bank has been established for more than 300 years. It is the third largest commercial bank in the United Kingdom, second only to HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland; it is also one of the largest commercial banks in the world, in 2007 The total assets reached 1956.7 billion US dollars, which is only under the Swiss Bank in the world, surpassing American consortiums such as Citigroup, Bank of America, and **.

  As the oldest bank in the world, Barclays Bank's style is conservative and slightly outdated. Generally speaking, it is a group culture with more than enough conservative and less pioneering. However, precisely because of this conservative style, they were not involved too much after the outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis. The Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the four largest banks in the UK, is in deep debt crisis at this time.

  The market fluctuated violently, and people were panicked.

  Under this general environment, the top management of Barclays Bank realized that perhaps their opportunity had arrived. This opportunity was to expand the US market, especially the investment banking business, and the US investment banking giants came into their sight like this.

   Barclays has its own investment banking business: Barclays Capital. But whether in Europe, the Americas, or the thriving Asian market, Barclays Capital is completely incomparable with any of the American investment banks, not even some European investment banks. In this case, if you want to expand your investment banking business as soon as possible, acquiring a mature investment bank is the fastest, most direct and most effective option.

  Bob Dimon, director of Barclays Bank, this grassroots banker and the current CEO John Valli have very different origins. Valli is a pure banker, an aristocrat, and a complete gentleman. And Bob Dimon was born in the grassroots, relying on opportunity and ability to rise to the top, with a radical and bold style. Although he was disliked by Valli and other conservatives, the board of directors valued his ability very much, and even offered him a higher salary than Watley. The salary is several times the profit.

  Among these two people, although Bob Dimon and John Valli cooperate so well that we can’t say that they complement each other and complement each other, they will not tear each other down and fight each other. After getting along for so many years, we all go our own way and work together for the company.

In April, Bob Dimon already had the idea of ​​acquiring Lehman Brothers. For this reason, he spent more than two months conducting a thorough assessment of the financial situation of Lehman Brothers. In June, he delivered a complete report to the board of directors. Acquisition plan. Unfortunately, Barclays' board of directors did not approve the acquisition plan because the price was too high. However, the board of directors did not completely close the door to the acquisition of Raymond Brothers. Their condition was "if they (Raymond) can sell it cheaply."

  Naturally, Bob Dimon’s team also participated in the financial conference of Raymond Brothers, but in order not to attract the attention of the market, they used fake names and organizations to register and log in. After listening to the financial data of Raymond Brothers, Bob Dimon was so ecstatic that he lost his composure and almost cried out.

   "Vali, maybe you should really reconsider my previous proposal now!"

He immediately dialed John Valli, "A quarterly loss of US$3.9 billion, a net loss of US$10 per share, is a crazy number. I believe we can easily win Ray with a 20% premium. Brothers, it is estimated that the entire transaction size will not exceed US$4 billion."

   And just three months ago, when Barclays Bank discussed the same acquisition plan, the budget was a full 10 billion US dollars.

   "I need to think about it!" Although the data differed greatly, John Valli remained calm enough, "I need to convene an emergency board meeting. Bob, this is a great opportunity for you to convince the board."

"I understand!" Bob Dimon hung up the phone confidently, and booked a direct flight to London. He is now in New York and is looking around for news about Raymond Brothers, specifically, potential buyers in the market. home news.

Although Bob Dimon has been paying attention to the news of Lehman Brothers for several months, the London market and the U.S. market still have some information that is not flowing smoothly. reason. After arriving in New York, Bob Dimon knew that when Bank of America wanted to acquire Lehman Brothers, he also knew that Ken Lewis was not willing, and he was currently negotiating with officials of the Federal Reserve and other secrets.

   It seems that only Bank of America is competing with them in the market. Bob Dimon is very happy and ready to bring this news back to convince the board of directors.

  Not to mention the reaction of Barclays Bank. At the venue, people including Jiang Shan and others were puzzled by Zhong Shi's sale of Bank of England assets.

"So far, there have been crises of different sizes in the banking industry throughout Europe, but except for Northern Rock Bank, the other banks have at least so far proved to be a false alarm." Jiang Shan recalled the past in his mind. After more than years of market news, he said with fingers, "There have been bad news from institutions such as Paribas, Northern Rock Bank, UBS, Deutsche Landbank, Japan Mizuho, ​​Deutsche Bank, etc. But so far, except for Northern Rock Bank being nationalized, Germany's Apart from the takeover of the state banks by the banking system, nothing worse has happened in Europe. It can be said that although the crisis caused by subprime loans spread to Europe, its damage and serious consequences were far less than those in the United States. In such a In such a situation, I really can’t understand how to go to the other side of the ocean thousands of miles away while ignoring a lot of short-selling opportunities here.”

   "You're wrong!" Zhong Shi's face suddenly darkened, "It's not that the problems in Europe are smaller than those in the United States, but that the problems in Europe haven't exploded yet. Believe me, the problems in Europe are far more serious than those in the United States."

   As he spoke, Zhong Shi scanned the audience again out of the corner of his eye, and found that the person wearing sunglasses who was mentioned when he was chatting and laughing with Jiang Shan when he entered the arena turned his head hastily again. If it is a coincidence once, it is obviously not the case twice or three times. Zhong Shi became vigilant all of a sudden, looked coldly at the man in the sunglasses for a long time, and secretly made a gesture of holding an umbrella. When he turned his head again, he rested his chin with his palm quietly.

   "What's the danger?" Jiang Shan didn't notice all this at all, and still asked Zhong Shi persistently.

  Zhong Shi put his fingers on his lips, as if he was stroking his mustache, but his palms covered his mouth just right, "I think we are being targeted by someone, maybe the other party understands vernacular."

   "Who? Who? Who?" Jiang Shan and the other two immediately became nervous, and looked around, but they couldn't find any suspicious people. At least what they saw was that the vast majority of people were listening carefully to the high-level narration of Raymond Brothers on the stage.

"Okay, I'm just skeptical." Zhong Shi stared at the stage, but kept saying in his mouth, "Gentlemen, if you still have memories, you should remember the banking merger that shocked the world last year. case?"

  In October 2007, a shocking event occurred in the world banking industry. A consortium composed of Royal Bank of Scotland, National Bank of Spain and Fortis Bank of Belgium bought ABN AMRO for $101 billion in cash and stock. This $100 billion M&A case is another M&A case over 100 billion U.S. dollars in the world in seven years. The other two are Vodafone's acquisition of Mannesmann and AOL's acquisition of Time Warner.

In this acquisition, Barclays of the United Kingdom is one of the bidders, and three consortiums including RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) are the other side of the bid. After the quotation, Barclays Bank, as the "white knight" of the Dutch bank, had to leave the market sadly and admit defeat because it could not obtain the support of shareholders.

"Of course I know!" After thinking for a while, Jiang Shan recalled all the details, covered his mouth and whispered, then asked puzzledly, "But what does this have to do with our sale of British bank assets? ?”

"It has a lot to do with it!" Zhong Shi crossed his legs, rested his chin with his hands, continued to cover his lips, and leaned forward slightly, as if he was listening carefully to the words of the Leimen Brothers executives, but in fact what he said was another matter. One thing, "If you have carefully reviewed this acquisition case, you will find that in the process of several rounds of bidding, both parties have used ABN Amro's US asset LS Bank as an important bargaining chip."

"What does this mean? This means that both Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are salivating over the US market. Moreover, under the current circumstances, all commercial banks are shifting from linear development to matrix development, that is, diversifying their businesses. So when investment banks like Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns have problems, it is hard to imagine that a British or European consortium intending to gain a foothold in the US market will give up such a good opportunity.”

"Although ABN AMRO ended up selling LS Bank, the RBS consortium still stubbornly ate ABN AMRO. I think they made a fatal mistake. This acquisition deviated from their original intention. Not to mention these, just Speaking of post-acquisition integration, at least so far, I haven't seen a significant boost to RBS's business, and they have issued more than £15 billion in new shares for financing, which has already caused dissatisfaction among other shareholders. "

"If at this time, a news that shakes the global market breaks out, such as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, what kind of impact do you think it will cause? Not to mention, because the acquisition of the assets of ABN Amro is digested, the basic financial statements of RBS this year It won’t look good, they have borrowed too much. And once the market confidence collapses, what kind of situation will RBS face at that time?”

"Will go bankrupt?" Jiang Shan quickly figured out the pros and cons, and his face turned pale. "If RBS goes bankrupt, it will cause a more violent reaction, and even the entire British banking industry may collapse. My God, this It's almost the end of the world!"

"You are right!" Zhong Shi's expression has never been as serious as this moment, "but you are also wrong, the British government cannot let this happen, they will inevitably rescue the banking system, this is the so-called too big to fail Although it is far from reaching such a serious level, I believe that the British Treasury and the Bank of England have noticed what happened in the United States, so they must maintain a high degree of attention to the banking industry in the near future."

   "So?" Jiang Shan was confused again.

"So if there is a British or European consortium interested in Leimen Brothers, their country's regulatory authorities may not agree to the acquisition at this time." Zhong Shi smiled, "And what we have to do is to be in the market Selling aggressively puts a certain amount of pressure on the market, and in turn allows this pressure to be passed on to regulators to help them make 'correct' decisions faster and better."

   "It's like this? It's like this!" Jiang Shan lowered his head slowly, thoughtful.

   PS: The author wrote some views on the recent stock market today, and it has been published in the relevant part of the public chapter works. Readers are welcome to take a look if you have time and are interested~~By the way, thank you for your monthly vote! Thank you book friends for your really annoying evaluation votes! I hope you will continue to support us!

  

  

  (end of this chapter)