It was October 20th, the day after Barron's birthday.
The SEC and the Nasdaq Stock Exchange have approved Skype's IPO application, which means that the company, which once rejected the sky-high acquisition offer from e-commerce giant eBay, will soon be listed on the Nasdaq.
Last year, eBay proposed to acquire Skype for $2.5 billion in cash, stock, and options. Barron knew that if Skype's team could achieve the performance growth required by eBay in the next few years, then with these options, the total transaction price would reach $4.1 billion!
However, Barron rejected this acquisition of Skype at the time. At that time, they appeased Skype's founding team and prepared to take Skype public at the right time. At that time, the profits they could obtain would definitely be higher than eBay's acquisition.
Skype now has more than 100 million free users worldwide, and the number of paid users has doubled from last year to 6 million, so it is time to go public.
At this time, Skype's shareholding ratio was as follows: DS Holdings held 75% of the shares, O2 Telecom held 10% of the shares, and the remaining 15% of the shares were held by its founding team.
According to their listing plan, Skype will sell 30 million shares to the public, accounting for 15% of its total share capital.
Of these, 20 million shares are newly issued shares, and the remaining 10 million shares belong to original shareholders, including part of the holdings of DS Holdings and Skype's founding team (DS Holdings and Skype's founding team each sold 5 million shares).
In this way, after the listing, Skype's total share capital will be 200 million shares. DS Holdings will hold 122.5 million shares, accounting for 61.25%; O2 Telecom will hold 17 million shares, accounting for 8.5%; the founding team will hold 20.5 million shares, accounting for 10.25%, and the rest will be publicly traded shares.
Currently, Skype's stock issue price is set in the range of US$21-23. If calculated at US$23, Skype's market value will be as high as US$4.6 billion, which is US$2.1 billion higher than eBay's acquisition bid last year.
However, considering that with the support of DS Group and O2 Telecom, the number of Skype's free and paid users has almost doubled compared to when eBay offered its price last year, and the current stock market situation is very optimistic, this market value is still very reasonable.
In this case, Skype will raise $460 million through this IPO, and by selling shares during the IPO process, DS Holdings and Skype's founding team will both receive $115 million.
It can be said that the young people on Skype's founding team, who were once poor and overwhelmed by lawsuits in California courts, have achieved financial freedom through Skype's listing.
This also makes them very excited.
DS Holdings' investment also yielded rich returns.
It is also worth mentioning that after Skype started the IPO process and received a warm response from investors during the first roadshow, O2 Telecom's share price also rose slightly, exceeding 6.5 pounds, as it holds 10% of Skype's shares. At this point, O2 Telecom's market value has officially exceeded 40 billion pounds, firmly sitting in the third place among European telecom companies after Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone.
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"Your Highness, I hope that the British Automotive Group can provide more jobs in the UK..."
After Brown took office, Barron met with him much less frequently than before - this is normal, after all, he has a lot of things to deal with.
However, Brown still took time to meet with Barron. During the meeting, he expressed his hope that the British Motor Group could provide more consolidation jobs in China...
"Well, Prime Minister, it's not that I don't want to do this, but realistically speaking, unless I am prepared for the British Motor Group to go bankrupt or be acquired in a few years, or even one or two years, it will be difficult to do as you said..."
Barron frowned and said to Brown:
"Frankly speaking, the British Motor Group's plan is to only keep the production of Bentley and Aston Martin in the UK. As for Jaguar and Land Rover, the production capacity will be gradually transferred to countries with lower costs."
Obviously, Barron's words will not satisfy Brown.
Because Bentley and Aston Martin, as luxury car brands that use hand-crafting as a selling point, do not have strong production capabilities.
Let's put it this way: by 2003, Bentley's cumulative production capacity had just exceeded 44,000 vehicles…
You have to know that at that time, Bentley had been established for 84 years, and its average annual output was only 523.8 units.
It was only after Bentley launched its best-selling model, the Continental GT, in 2003 that production began to increase. However, it was not until the 102nd year of Bentley's establishment, that is, in 2021, that its cumulative production capacity just exceeded 200,000 units. This number is not even one-tenth of FAW-Volkswagen's annual production at the time...
Aston Martin wasn't much better, with annual production in 2000 just over 1,000 units.
In other words, the combined annual output of these two brands is only in the four digits, which is almost nothing in terms of boosting British industry.
But what Barron said makes sense. Why did the British automobile industry decline? Because it had no competitiveness at all.
In the beginning, Britain's automobile industry was indeed glorious. Before World War II, as the initiator of the First Industrial Revolution, Britain had accumulated strong automobile industry technology and automobile cultural heritage.
Britain's cultural heritage gave birth to super luxury brands such as Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Even now, they are still the representatives of the world's top wealthy people and the entry tickets to the high-end class.
It can be said that British cars are born with aristocratic temperament.
After World War II, the British automobile industry entered a golden period of rapid development. In 1955, automobile production reached 1.2 million units, making it the first country in Europe to produce over one million vehicles. The scale of the automobile industry was second only to that of the United States.
At that time, there was no such thing as the German and Japanese brands that would later dominate the world.
The turning point was the emergence of the Ford Model T - it changed the pattern of automobile production, and assembly line production transformed cars from toys for the nobility into a means of transportation for the common people.
However, British cars stubbornly adhere to the "aristocratic" way, using hand-made products and unparalleled materials to create cars that are like works of art.
However, the adherence to the "aristocratic way" ultimately proved to be a devastating blow to the British automobile industry - failing to catch up with the trend of assembly line production and commercialization, and serving only a small number of aristocratic classes, the British automobile industry missed a big market trend and was soon overtaken by countries represented by Germany and Japan.
Therefore, British cars succeeded because of the "aristocracy" and failed because of the "aristocracy".
Just like now, the automotive industry is not just like before, where one factory can complete all the work, but requires the existence of the entire industrial chain.
But Britain has gradually lost its competitiveness in this regard, and many parts for the manufacturing of brands under the British Motor Group need to be imported.
If they still focus their production capacity mainly in the UK, not to mention the high wages, even the current exchange rate of the pound is very unfriendly to them.
Because according to surveys, more than 80% of vehicles manufactured in the UK need to be exported and sold overseas.
However, the exchange rate of the pound has been high, which is very unfavorable for their exports. Since they place their manufacturing capacity locally, they will definitely purchase in pounds. The final price of the car will also be in pounds, and then converted into other countries' currencies, which makes it completely uncompetitive in terms of price.
Luxury car brands like Bentley and Aston Martin are easier to deal with, as they have low production capacity but high profits.
But for companies like Jaguar and Land Rover, they have no advantage at all against competing brands such as Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. In this case, the result of insisting on expanding production locally, apart from continuing to provide blood transfusions to the British Motor Group, is bankruptcy or being acquired again.
This is under the premise that Britain has not left the EU. If Britain leaves the EU and tariff barriers appear with Europe, then the British Auto Group will be at a disadvantage in both importing and exporting parts...
"We will try our best to maintain our production capacity in the UK, but the prerequisite is that we need the support of the government. Without corresponding support policies, in order to survive, we can only move the production of mass-produced cars abroad..."
Barron told Brown.
To put it bluntly, Barron's current status and core interests are all in Britain, or obtained with the support of Britain. Naturally, he does not want to see Britain's industrial hollowing out and eventual decline as in his previous life - the result of that can only be that Britain will follow the United States even more closely.
Therefore, if he can do something to change these things, he will try his best to do it.
Of course, the premise is that it does not damage his own interests too much.