In early September, Barron came to Germany again.
More than three months later, the interior decoration of the 330-foot superyacht he bought before the World Cup was finally completed. The interior decoration style perfected by Alexander Michel, who designed the "Devon Hill Series" of the Gucci Group, made Barron very satisfied.
Barron will then take the superyacht, which he has named "Caesar", on its maiden voyage from the North Sea into the Strait of Dover, first stopping at Le Havre in France, then turning back up the Thames estuary and stopping in London.
However, before Barron left Germany, he went to Wolfsburg and met with Volkswagen Group CEO Bernd Schreidt.
At present, the acquisition of the Bentley brand by Caesar Fund has finally come to fruition. After the new acquisition plan was reached, the board of directors of the Volkswagen Group finally approved the agreement.
In the final agreement, Kaiser Fund will pay 2.5 billion pounds to acquire the Bentley brand, as well as a car factory in Crewe, England and Wolfsburg, Germany.
However, of the 2.5 billion pounds that the Caesars Fund needs to pay to the Volkswagen Group, 350 million pounds will be used as an advance payment for the W12 engine purchased from the Volkswagen Group after acquiring the Bentley brand.
Currently, the most high-end automobile engines include the V12 engines of Mercedes-Benz and BMW brands and the W12 engine of Volkswagen Group.
Before this, the engine used by the Bentley brand was the W12 engine provided by the Volkswagen Group. Therefore, in order to ensure the smooth production of the Bentley brand in the future, they still need to purchase the W12 engine from the Volkswagen Group. This agreement includes the confirmation of these engine purchase orders.
Of course, the Volkswagen Group can also obtain stable profits and get rid of the burden of a German automobile factory. These are the reasons why Bissert was able to convince the board of directors, especially Piech.
Initially, what Piedmont was going to sell to the Kaiser Fund was the Dresden plant used to produce the Phaeton model. In this relatively new plant, in which the Volkswagen Group invested nearly 200 million euros, more than 800 employees can produce up to 150 Phaeton models per day.
However, Piech was strongly opposed to the sale of the Dresden factory. In order to appease the other party, Piech replaced the factory to be sold with another automobile factory in Wolfsburg, which is also a complete vehicle assembly plant.
Although the salary expenses of employees in this German factory will be a burden, at the same time, this number of auto workers is also needed to reorganize the Bentley brand, so they finally decided to "take over" for the Volkswagen Group.
This is not so difficult to accept considering that these personnel can provide technology for some new automobile production plants in China and other places.
After the signing of the agreement, it means that the Bentley brand has officially begun the process of separating from the Volkswagen Group and becoming part of the Caesar Fund.
After this news began to spread, it not only became a hotly discussed news in Britain, but also put a certain amount of pressure on Ford.
Since September, Alan Mulally, the new CEO of Ford, has taken office. His first task after taking office is to plan for the future development of Ford.
What he proposed was the "One Ford" strategy, which was to reorganize the company, optimize production capacity and achieve profitability, adjust product structure and accelerate the research and development of new models, and accelerate the concentration of resources on the core Ford brand building.
Alan Mulally's goal is to enable Ford to produce more models suitable for the global market from a few core platforms, thereby further reducing costs and increasing the commonality of parts and systems.
What this means is that some brands other than Ford are also within the reduction target.
Alan Mulally's plan was also supported by Bill Ford, so the sale of Aston Martin and even more brands was expected, and it was only a matter of time.
In this way, the only issue left in the negotiations between Caesar Fund and them on the acquisition of the three British car brands was the final price.
The original bid of Caesar Fund for the three car brands including Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover was US$4 billion, but Ford believed that it could not be less than US$5 billion.
The two sides have not reached an agreement on this point and neither side has made any concessions.
Even after Caesars Fund reached an agreement with Volkswagen Group to acquire the Bentley brand, Caesars Fund reduced its contacts with Ford and became less active in the acquisition of those three brands.
You know, after the initial news that Ford was interested in selling Aston Martin, including the offer from Caesars Fund, nearly 30 companies or institutions became interested in it and contacted Ford, including even the luxury brand group LVMH Group.
However, none of the bids from these companies and institutions could satisfy Ford. As Barron once said to Bill Ford, the Caesars Fund was the most sincere among them.
Therefore, after this situation occurred, Ford was a little nervous. They became more proactive and said that they could sell Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover as a package, but in terms of the price, $4 billion was unacceptable.
However, the Caesars Fund did not raise the price as they wished. Instead, it began to negotiate with Ford about the pension funds of the employees of these three brands.
You know, when the Caesar Fund acquired Volkswagen Group's German factory, the most they had to bear was the cost of paying for the pension funds of the employees in office after the acquisition. Those who had already retired belonged to the Volkswagen Group, and their employee pension fund would need to bear part of their pensions.
The acquisition of Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford is different because these brands are subsidiaries of Ford and the pensions of their retired employees are borne by the employee pension funds of these three companies. If Caesars Fund completes the acquisition, Caesars Fund will be responsible for it afterwards.
Caesar Fund's meaning is very simple. You can let me raise the price, but you need to inject capital into the pension funds of these companies' retired employees, after all, they retired earlier.
After all this back and forth, the two sides finally reached a general agreement - Caesars Fund increased its acquisition offer to US$4.5 billion. At the same time, Ford needs to inject a total of US$350 million into the employee pension funds of the three companies to provide pension security for employees who retire during their ownership of the three brands.
At this point, after paying a total of nearly US$9 billion (2.5 billion pounds + 4.5 billion US dollars), Caesars Fund finally completed the acquisition of four British car brands: Bentley, Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover.
This news also caused a stir in the whole of England.
Correspondingly, this acquisition by Caesar Fund brought four British car brands back to Britain and also won the support of the government and local governments. During the negotiations with them, it obtained a series of preferential policies including tax cuts and subsidies.
After acquiring these brands, Caesars merged them to form the British Automotive Group, which has four brands: Bentley, Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover.