Yes, Downton Abbey became popular. Thanks to many factors, the sales of The Independent increased from 150,000 to 170,000 copies a week after the novel was published, and it is still increasing...
Of course, it will take longer for this lasting effect to be seen.
After a "long" wait, DS Capital finally completed its short sale of AirGate shares.
Initially, they took out 5 million pounds to short the stock with a 10% margin and borrowed approximately 1.83 million shares of AirGate through Barclays Bank.
DS Capital sold these stocks at an average price of around US$37.7, and ultimately purchased 1.83 million shares of AirGate at an average price of just US$1.54.
In the end, DS Capital earned approximately US$54 million, equivalent to approximately £36 million, from this short-selling operation after paying capital gains tax and related securities lending fees.
The 5 million pounds used as a deposit will be returned to the original funding pool to continue implementing the previously set investment strategy.
With the funds, Barron completed the acquisition of the three plots of land in King's Cross. After transferring the funds to DS Capital Management, Amber was responsible for completing the land transfer process.
In addition, the Victorian mansion in Chelsea was also purchased by DS Capital Management after spending 17 million pounds.
At the same time, Julia was responsible for organizing the family's four original hotels into the Cavendish Hotel Group, with Rob Pike, the original head of the family's hotel business, serving as the general manager of the hotel group.
The Cavendish Hotel Group will lease the mansion in Chelsea owned by DS Asset Management and use its own assets to borrow £12 million from the bank to renovate and renovate the Victorian mansion and turn it into a luxury hotel - the Devonshire (Chelsea) Hotel.
It is expected that the transformation and renovation of the mansion into a luxury hotel will be completed within three months.
At that time, outstanding employees of the Cavendish Hotel in Soho will be selected and recruited, and after training, they will move here to become employees of the first Devonshire-branded luxury hotel.
After all, the house itself will have about thirty rooms after the renovation - including a royal suite and a duke suite, which is similar in size to the original Cavendish Hotel in London.
If the royal suites launched by other luxury hotels seem a bit unworthy of their names, then the royal suites of the Devonshire Hotel are impeccable - after all, their family's manor was not only the place where Queen Victoria stayed, but also where Queen Mary was imprisoned for a long time on her orders.
Not naming it "Queen Mary Suite" is already a great honor to the royal family...
After spending these funds, the balance in DS Capital's account was reduced from 36 million pounds to less than 13 million pounds.
According to Sean, the butler, a professional organization has been hired to estimate the overall renovation and modernization of Chatsworth Manor. The project is expected to cost 20 million pounds to complete...
The plan includes converting some of the manor's rooms into a hotel for commercial operation. Chatsworth Manor has more than 100 rooms in total. After the renovation, about 30 of them will be open to the public. Among them, 10 suites will be rented to Devonhill Hotel Group and become guest rooms of the new Devonhill Chatsworth Manor Hotel.
In the near future, Barron plans to set up the Devonshire Cultural Tourism Group, into which the family's Chatsworth House, and two other castles and estates in Scotland and Ireland will be incorporated.
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"Your Highness, we have reached an agreement with Barclays Bank to provide us with a loan of 20 million pounds using the assets held by DS Asset Management as collateral."
In the DS Capital office, Amber Sheehan reports to Barron on fund raising.
There were many places where he would need the money in the future. After Barron spent money to buy the land in King's Cross and the luxury house in Chelsea, he mortgaged them to the bank again for a loan.
By this calculation, the funds spent on these properties are just over 3 million pounds and part of the interest on the bank loan.
Don't think it's too exaggerated to borrow 20 million pounds for a property that cost more than 23 million pounds.
In fact, as a private bank, Barclays Bank can be more "flexible" for the sake of profit. Moreover, DS Capital's securities investment account is opened at Barclays Bank, and the other party is not worried that Barron will not be able to repay the loan. At critical moments, they will also "respond flexibly."
Moreover, real estate mortgage loans have begun to recover after a slight decline since 2000. Against this background, banks will become bolder in order to gain more profits.
It is not an exaggeration now, but in a few years, not to mention the booming real estate loans in the United States, even in the UK, the mortgage ratios offered by many banks have reached 125-130%.
In other words, if you mortgage a property worth 1 million pounds to a bank, the bank can lend you more than 1.2 million pounds. Do you want to take the loan?
Without this craziness, how could there be the subprime mortgage crisis sweeping the world? For the sake of profit, capitalists are always willing to sell the rope to hang themselves.
DS Capital's method of maintaining debt expansion means that almost all capital is being used. In this way, risks can be controlled during economic upswings.
However, once the economy faces a crisis or downturn, it can easily lead to a chain collapse due to the depletion of liquidity.
However, Barron's biggest advantage is that he has experience from his previous life and can see the general economic trend clearly.
After all, he was forced to make a living and needed funds everywhere, so Barron could only continue to look for financial investment opportunities to raise funds for the reorganization of his industry.
This time, his target was the futures product of the London Futures Exchange (LME) - London Copper (LME Copper).
In the first half of last year, as the global economy fell into a downturn due to the bursting of the Internet bubble, demand shrank, causing copper prices to slowly decline from 1,191 pounds (per ton) in January to 1,121 pounds in May.
However, after June, the price of copper in London began to fall rapidly, and at one point it fell below the support level of 1,100 pounds since 1999.
Amid the disappointment in the market and the occurrence of the "911 Incident", investors were completely desperate and the price of copper in London fell to 890 pounds in one fell swoop!
Until November, copper prices rebounded sharply from the low point in nearly 15 years, stimulated by large-scale global production cuts!
The subsequent recovery of the U.S. economy continued the rebound in copper prices in the first half of this year!
It can be said that at this time, the U.S. economy has a great impact on global copper prices, because it is still the world's largest copper consumer.
But Barron knew that by now, in mid-to-late July, the momentum of London copper prices rising in the first half of the year would gradually fade...
In the third quarter of this year, the US economy will weaken again, market sentiment will be increasingly hit, and copper prices will fall sharply within a few days.
In the four weeks when the decline was the most severe, the price of London copper would drop from the previous high point of nearly 1,500 pounds to less than 1,000 pounds, a drop of nearly 50%! !
This was also his best opportunity in the near future!
After all, the leverage of London copper could be as high as 20 times, and the plate was extremely large, with daily trading volume in the billions and tens of billions, which was not comparable to the US stocks he had previously operated, so it could also accommodate larger amounts of funds.