But there is no need for Barron to make such a big concession for no reason, because acquiring the next factory is not as simple as taking over the employees of those factories. It also involves the pension issues of some employees who are about to reach retirement age. Moreover, if the price needs to be increased, then there is still room for negotiation. They will definitely need Volkswagen Group to make up for it in other aspects.
Now Caesar Fund is negotiating with both Volkswagen Group and Ford at the same time, and it depends on which side can produce results first.
At the same time, Li Lu, who had returned to China, was also making rapid progress. She quickly sent a list of current Chinese automobile manufacturers, including a list of some automobile brands that could potentially be acquired.
Among them, some have automobile production licenses, while others risk production without a license - in fact, in the early days, it was difficult for private automobile brands to obtain this qualification, including the later well-known Chinese automobile brands Chery and Geely. In the beginning, they manufactured cars and sold them "secretly" without obtaining this qualification.
Of course, if Tianhe Capital wants to acquire a company, it will only choose a company with an automobile production license.
In this list, there are some small-scale automobile companies such as the already acquired Red Star Automobile, the ineffective Tianma Automobile, and the listed Songliao Automobile...
However, Barron did not pay much attention to all this, and instead focused his attention on...
"What? You want to acquire NAC?"
"Yes, whether in terms of scale or technical strength, Nanjing Automobile Group is the most suitable one."
Hearing Barron's affirmative words, Li Lu hesitated for a moment on the phone and said,
"But that may not be too easy, because Nanjing Automobile is now in conflict with SAIC, the number one automobile group in China, and this company is now a state-owned enterprise run by the Jiangsu Province. Given their scale, it may not be so easy to be acquired..."
"We have to try. Nanjing Automobile is in a very bad situation right now. In addition, they are not in the upper hand in the conflict with SAIC. It is still possible that they will accept the acquisition..."
There is still one thing Baron did not say directly. After all, with Nanjing Automobile's glorious history, it is easier to accept being acquired by an "outsider" like Tianhe Capital than being acquired by SAIC at a low price in the end.
NAC once manufactured China's first light truck and could be called the "big brother" of SAIC - when SAIC was still manufacturing tractors, NAC's trucks were already selling well across the country.
In the field of buses, Nanjing Automobile also has a joint venture, Nanjing Automobile Iveco, which is very famous in China.
However, after entering the sedan field, Nanjing Automobile suffered a complete failure in the development of small sedans. The sales of many sedans it developed never met expectations and ended in a miserable failure.
The conflict between Nanjing Automobile and SAIC is because last year, Nanjing Automobile, due to its failure in the passenger car field, made a desperate move and acquired the bankrupt British traditional automobile brand Rover for 53 million pounds, inheriting all its assets and technologies, including the MG brand.
Before Nanjing Automobile acquired Rover, SAIC had already spent 67 million pounds to acquire the complete intellectual property rights and technical platforms of Rover 75, 25 and other models. SAIC established the Roewe brand based on this authorization.
In other words, Rover sold itself to two buyers. Selling itself twice led to unclear intellectual property rights and the dispute between NAC and SAIC.
However, although Nanjing Automobile is the "big brother" of SAIC in terms of seniority, the situation is no longer the same as before.
First of all, the acquisition of Rover this time has caused great pain to Nanjing Automobile, because it spent 53 million pounds on the acquisition of Rover, but in fact, it invested 3 billion yuan in the operation of this acquisition, and it will take another 10 billion yuan to digest it later...
However, the market sales of the sedan models launched by Nanjing Automobile, including Ingelson, New Accor, Fiat (a product of Nanjing Automobile's joint venture Nanjing Fiat), and even MG, which was launched after the acquisition of Rover, have not been satisfactory.
This led to NAC falling into a financial dilemma at the time, and it was no longer able to carry out research and development in the passenger car field.
SAIC has become the leading automobile company in China and is in an advantageous position in the competition between the two companies.
Barron knew that the conflict between the two sides eventually ended with SAIC's acquisition of NAC at the end of 2007 in the original time and space, but now, he was ready to join the battle and acquire NAC from SAIC first.
Of course, he also knew that this operation was not easy. After all, SAIC and Nanjing Automobile were both state-owned enterprises in China. When the upper echelons did not want the two sides to fight and waste internal energy, it would be easy to achieve mergers and acquisitions and restructuring with a little push.
But he also knew that as early as the Spring Festival in 2003, China's National Development and Reform Commission had brought together the leaders of SAIC and Nanjing Automobile, hoping that the two sides would achieve a restructuring, but it ultimately came to nothing.
This shows that Nanjing Automobile itself did not want to be acquired by SAIC. Later, in 2007, they were merged into SAIC because they were really trying their best. After acquiring Rover, they launched sedan products such as MG3 and MG7. The sales volume in the first year after the products were put on the market was only a pitiful 3,000 units. This failure also led to Nanjing Automobile's lack of strength, and finally it had to obey the arrangement.
In addition, whether the top management pushed for the merger of SAIC and NAC, or SAIC took the initiative to merge with NAC, the main reason was the conflict between the two parties over Rover's intellectual property rights.
SAIC bought the intellectual property rights of the Rover 25 and 75 models and engines for 67 million pounds, and Nanjing Automobile acquired Rover, MG, and its engine supplier Powertrain for 50 million pounds.
In the following two years, SAIC and NAC launched two independent brand products, SAIC Roewe and NAC MG, respectively, based on Rover's platform.
These two cars have the same origin, and both companies equally emphasize their British style in their marketing. It can be said that they are in conflict with each other in every aspect, and the trend of internal friction is obvious.
But if Barron completes the acquisition of Ford and Volkswagen Group's British car brands, he will no longer need the Rover brand and technology. He can reach an agreement with SAIC and transfer the Rover "legacy" owned by Nanjing Automobile to the other party. He only needs to acquire Nanjing Automobile Group.
Therefore, in this case, the acquisition of Nanjing Automobile Group is not out of the question.
After he told Li Lu this, the CEO of Tianhe Capital started to contact Nanjing Automobile Group about acquiring Nanjing Automobile Group.
Of course, if they really want to come up with conditions that will appeal to Jiangsu Province, that is, the controlling party of Nanjing Automobile Group, they still need help from Barron. For example, after Tianhe Capital acquires Nanjing Automobile Group, in addition to keeping the production base in Jiangsu Province and expanding its scale, it can also complete a localized joint venture project with a British luxury car brand.