Regardless of whether Bloomberg sincerely welcomes Xiao Qi, he knows that Xiao Qi's investment in Bloomberg is unstoppable, so letting go of his disappointment and starting formal cooperation is the best way to serve his own interests.
With Bloomberg's release, there is no longer any obstacle to Merrill Lynch's sale of 20% of Bloomberg's shares.
However, due to Merrill Lynch's huge losses, the purchase price was still set at over US$5 billion, and it was in cash. It would be credited to Merrill Lynch's account within three days of signing the contract.
Xiao Qi doesn't have much resistance to a few hundred million more or a few hundred million less. After all, the acquisition of high-quality assets is difficult in itself, and nothing can be bought easily. He feels this deeply.
However, he also made a request not to make the news public for the time being and wait until the Black Rock Group's equity acquisition is completed at the same time before making it public.
It is naturally impossible for Merrill Lynch to refuse, but at the same time, they also hope to settle this matter as soon as possible so as to obtain greater benefits for the company... ahem, and at the same time, to obtain more benefits for their board of directors themselves.
Yes.
Most of Merrill Lynch's former directors were not inclined to sell BlackRock Group's shares because this asset was even better than Bloomberg's, and Merrill Lynch was also the largest shareholder of BlackRock Group, giving them much more power than at Bloomberg.
.
But no matter how hard they persist, they can't withstand Xiao Qi's endless attacks of money and interests.
Xiao Qi allocated a total of 300 million U.S. dollars to Carrillo Consulting Company, and told them to take no more money if they did not have enough. In order to complete the task as soon as possible, these lobbyists used money, antiques, real estate, etc., and they all changed their ways.
Send it upward.
In addition, there are many human relationships, such as classmates, friends, pillow lovers, etc. The power of persuasion is not that general.
Just as Thain thought, if Merrill Lynch was still the international investment banking giant, then these shells might not be effective. But the problem is that now Merrill Lynch has become a big ship that is about to sink. Who doesn't want to plan for themselves?
Who doesn’t want to have a prosperous life for the rest of their life after getting off the ship?
Therefore, the seven directors who were the focus of attack, after righteously rejecting it many times, shyly took away the money Xiao Qi gave them, and then began to promote the sale plan in the board of directors.
The composition of Merrill Lynch's board of directors is very complicated, but the seven of them have their own power. Together with Thain, the nominal boss, it is easy to occupy about 40% of the voting rights.
As for the remaining directors who hold 60% of the voting rights, of course it is impossible for everyone to be their enemy. Even if they are not their friends, seeing such a big trend and selling the shares of Black Rock Group is indeed good for themselves.
If there are benefits, then it is only natural to follow it subconsciously.
Therefore, Merrill Lynch basically reached a decision to first sell 49.8% of Black Rock Group's shares to Xiao Qi for US$12 billion.
The only problem now is the board of directors of Black Rock Group.
Contrary to Xiao Qi's expectation, Black Rock Group's resistance to this acquisition was unexpectedly strong.
Not only did the formal contact have no effect. Even if Carrillo Consulting Company personally intervened, the gains were extremely limited. At most, only one or two people reluctantly agreed, but they only agreed when others proposed it, and wanted them to propose it.
Agree, that is absolutely impossible.
The board of directors of Black Rock Group actually does not hold many shares of Black Rock Group at all. The total amount is only about 8%.
The largest shareholder of Black Rock Group is Merrill Lynch with 49.8% of its shares. The second largest shareholder is PNC Financial Services Group from Pennsylvania, which is also the largest local investment banking group. It may be worse than the five major investment banks. But it is definitely
One of the top 20 investment banks in the world, it holds 31% of the shares of Black Rock Group.
The two companies together account for 80% of the shares of Black Rock Group. It stands to reason that they can decide everything, but in fact this is not the case.
If you want to put it this way, Black Rock Group also merged with Merrill Lynch Investment Management Company in 2006. Many of its current directors are from Merrill Lynch. So are they not opposed to this merger?
Acquisition?
The most important thing is that every time Black Rock Group merges and reorganizes, it will put forward a prerequisite to the partners, that is, if the major shareholders want to sell shares, they must obtain their consent, otherwise the shares cannot be sold!
Now the card is stuck in this place. Xiao Qi also knows through Carrillo Consulting Company that the board of directors has other plans.
The man behind the scenes is the Blackstone Group that Xiao Qi wants to deal with.
As we all know, Blackstone Group came out of the asset management part of Blackstone Group from the beginning, and many of the senior executives in power are subordinates of the two bosses of Blackstone Group.
Now that Merrill Lynch is about to collapse, Blackstone Group wants to gather Blackrock Group under its banner again to further strengthen its power.
The plan they proposed to the management of the board of directors of Black Rock Group was to wait until Merrill Lynch went bankrupt, and Black Rock Group would use its power to select Black Rock Group among many competitors to purchase 49.8% of the shares at a low price, thus realizing Black Rock and Black Rock Group.
of merger.
The benefit given by Blackstone Group is that Blackstone Group will still operate independently in the future. Blackstone Group will only be responsible for overall decision-making, and will also distribute an equivalent of 5% of Blackrock Group shares to the board of directors and management of Blackrock Group.
.
The 5% they offered is much better than the 1%-3% offered by Xiao Qi. More importantly, the management of Black Rock Group also wants to maintain its current power, and compared to Xiao Qi, they are more willing to
Trust your previous bosses.
The person most unhappy about this was not Xiao Qi, but Merrill Lynch.
Hurrah!
You have always been a part of me. Basically, you are still a member of our Merrill Lynch company. But now you have a strong wings, but when the company needs you, you let me lose the chain at a critical moment?
You don't want me to sell it to pay off the debt, and you will take the opportunity to buy it at a low price after I go bankrupt?
How can such a good thing happen!?
For a time, even the several shareholders who had previously disagreed were filled with indignation, and they all roared that they wanted to show Black Rock Group some face. If Black Rock Group did not agree, they would directly turn their backs.
It's a pity that Merrill Lynch is no longer the Merrill Lynch it was before. It's already a crumbling house. Who will really take them seriously?
To put it bluntly, if it weren't for Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America... and other Wall Street giants, using Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers as bargaining chips to fight against Washington, they would have collapsed long ago.
Got it!
For such companies, how can American companies, which have always been very realistic, especially the largest asset management company like Black Rock Group, take their threats seriously?
In order to receive rewards worth more than one billion US dollars, and to allow themselves to completely control their own destiny in the future, most of the top executives of Black Rock Group have long been determined to merge with Black Rock Group!
When Merrill Lynch heard this formal reply, it felt deeply humiliated.
Everyone pushed against the wall, but it shouldn't be his own branch that took the lead in pushing against it, and it was still so cold and heartless - well, although Wall Street has always been like this.
Therefore, Merrill Lynch also joined forces and began to besiege Black Rock Group.
On the morning of June 29, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Stan Russell, vice president of the cash management department of Black Rock Group, confessed to the New York High Court that in the past three years, Black Rock Group had used various fraud and concealment methods to defraud its investors.
The cash obtained from the proceeds was openly used as bonuses for management, with the amount suspected to be as high as 130 million US dollars!
At the same time, the New York Times also broke the news that the Seventh U.S. Federal Circuit Court also received a joint letter from 33 employees of the real estate consulting strategy department of Black Rock Group.
It explains that in the past eight years, Black Rock Group has deliberately misled investors, allowing them to enter this inherently inflated market, thereby earning a large amount of service fees.
The price paid by ordinary people is that they lost all their money during the subprime mortgage crisis that began last year, and countless families went bankrupt.
As soon as these two pieces of news came out, they immediately caused an uproar throughout the United States.
Americans have always been deeply indignant about corporate executives receiving tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year in dividends and equity incentives. Especially now during the subprime mortgage crisis, I don’t know how many people are receiving relief funds.
As they live their lives, they even have a mentality of hating high-paid people.
Black Rock Group blatantly used investors' money to pay themselves bonuses, which can be said to have lost people's trust in them. It immediately aroused a wave of criticism of Black Rock Group and asked the U.S. Federal Court to investigate their faults in the cash business.
Voices of fraud immediately emerged from all over the country.
Speaking of which, Americans are quite full and have nothing to do.
Many people originally had nothing to do with this matter, but they seemed to feel the same and made protest speeches on various occasions.
Even people who are not related to it are like this, not to mention the customers of Black Rock Group. They feel as uncomfortable as eating flies.
Although Black Rock Group's annual returns are not as generous as Mr. Buffett's, they are still very good. The most important thing is that the threshold is much lower than Buffett's, making it more convenient for small and medium-sized investors.
But now they know that this group of people is eating money in the middle. If not, their profits will definitely be higher!
What's so great about this?
As a result, the phone calls of Black Rock Group were directly opened by angry people, and lawyer letters flew to them like snowflakes! (To be continued, please search Piaotian Literature, the novel is better and updated faster!