In the end, the German team won 4-2 in the penalty shootout and advanced to the semi-finals with a total score of 5-3.
After watching the game, Barron received an invitation from Wolfsburg - Volkswagen's headquarters is in Wolfsburg, commonly known as Wolfsburg.
In fact, Wolfsburg is roughly between Bremerhaven and Berlin, but after leaving the A&R shipyard in Bremerhaven last time, Baron and Fan Bingbing went west into the Netherlands for travel, so they did not pass by Wolfsburg.
Currently, Volkswagen Group ranks fourth in the global automaker sales ranking, behind General Motors, Toyota and Ford.
However, in five years, Volkswagen Group will surpass the previous three and become the world's largest automaker.
While visiting the Volkswagen Group's headquarters, Barron tentatively asked Dr. Bill Bissert, the current CEO of Volkswagen Group, whether he was interested in selling Volkswagen's Bentley brand. He could buy it for 2 billion pounds in cash.
You know, in 1998, Volkswagen Group bought the Bentley brand for only 640 million pounds, and eight years later Baron raised the price to more than three times the previous price.
"I'm sorry, Your Highness, the Bentley brand has been integrated into the Volkswagen Group and is an important part of our strategy. We have never thought of selling it."
After hearing what Dr. Bi Ruide said, Barron glanced at him and said:
"But I heard that Volkswagen Group's investors strongly urged you to reduce costs, but your restructuring plan was resisted by the union...Excuse me, Bentley itself is not profitable, and now I'm afraid its importance to your Volkswagen Group is decreasing. Selling Bentley will allow Volkswagen to have more sufficient capital to make adjustments."
In fact, Volkswagen's profits have been declining in recent years - their profits in 2004 fell from 2.9 billion pounds in 2001 to 697 million pounds, so investors are increasingly calling on it to cut costs at its home base in Germany.
Most of Volkswagen's workers are in Germany and receive hourly wages that are among the highest in the automaking industry.
However, Bi Ruide's restructuring plan to implement cost cuts was resisted by employees.
Barron noticed that after he said these words, Bi Ruide's eyes moved, but in the end he still said:
"I need to discuss this with the board of directors, Your Highness."
"I will await your reply."
Baron knew that Bissert's hesitation was that this year was the last year of his term as CEO, and he had not made a final decision on whether to renew his contract with Volkswagen Group - because as the current CEO, Bissert had a tense relationship with Piech, the chairman of the Volkswagen Group's Supervisory Board and the group's former CEO.
It was when Piech was the CEO of Volkswagen Group that he led the acquisition of Rolls-Royce Bentley. However, Rolls-Royce was only held for five years before it was acquired by BMW. But what Piech advocated at the time was the high-end brand strategy of the Volkswagen Group.
However, due to the decline in profits of the Volkswagen Group, Piech is more inclined to increase the group's profits. For example, high-end brands have low sales and cannot contribute much profit to the group. In fact, Piech does not pay much attention to them. This is also the reason why Piech is dissatisfied with Piech's abandonment of the high-end brand strategy that he advocated when he was in office.
Before this, Barron was unwilling to give up and sent people to make an offer to BMW, preparing to take back the Rolls-Royce brand from them for 500 million pounds, which was more than ten times the price that BMW paid to acquire the Rolls-Royce brand.
But not surprisingly, his acquisition intention was rejected by BMW without hesitation.
Now Barron can only focus on Bentley, the British luxury car brand, and if he wants to acquire Bentley from the Volkswagen Group, it seems that he can only succeed when Pierre-Emerick Aubrey is in charge of the Volkswagen Group.
If the original time and space progresses, Audi CEO Martin Winterkorn will take over the position of Volkswagen Group CEO next year, then after that, Volkswagen Group may not have the idea of selling the Bentley brand...
…
At 8 pm on July 9, the final of this World Cup was held at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and Baron and his friends watched the game in the same box where they had watched the Germany vs. Argentina match before.
The final was between France and Italy - before this World Cup, the Italian football world was hit by the "phone gate" incident in which several clubs, led by Juventus, were suspected of illegal contact with referees.
All of a sudden, many old accounts of refereeing errors and misjudgments were dug up, and the Italian judicial authorities quickly launched an investigation. For a time, it became questionable whether the Italian team could participate in the World Cup in Germany.
Of course, Italy did make it to the World Cup, and did pretty... well.
And this World Cup final is also very famous...
"Zidane is too impulsive..."
Seeing that Italian player Materazzi successfully used trash talk to anger the French team's "brain" Zidane, who knocked Materazzi headfirst and was then sent off by the referee, Abramovich shook his head and said to Barron.
"I'm afraid we have to congratulate the Italian team. The World Cup is theirs."
Zidane, who was sent off with a red card, also knocked the French team's World Cup trophy away.
Sure enough, the Italian team, which was not good at penalty shootouts, finally got their revenge by defeating France 5:3. Italy stood on the world championship podium for the fourth time.
After the World Cup, Barron received the news he wanted. Volkswagen Group CEO Bernd Pierre called Barron and said that Volkswagen Group was willing to negotiate with them on the sale of the Bentley brand.
It seems that it was Barron's offer of 2 billion pounds that finally impressed the other party. After all, with this money, Volkswagen Group can invest in other brands and the profits it can obtain will definitely be higher than the current level.
As for luxury cars, Volkswagen also has Bugatti and Lamborghini. Although they are both sports car brands, they are also well-known brands - at this time, Volkswagen Group had not yet acquired Porsche.
To be honest, the bid of 2 billion pounds to buy Bentley is really not low, because since being acquired by Volkswagen, or in other words, Bentley's profitability has not been strong. It is the brand image of luxury cars that makes the Volkswagen Group reluctant to let go, otherwise it would have been sold long ago.
However, the automobile industry that Barron planned for the future does need luxury car brands like Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Moreover, they are all of British origin. Their acquisition by Barron, the Duke of England, is more symbolic and easier to gain support from the British people.
After it became difficult to acquire Rolls-Royce, he had no choice but to target Volkswagen Group with an attractive price.
Having said that, if David Pierre was not the CEO of Volkswagen Group, the other party would probably not sell Bentley even if Baron offered 3 billion pounds.