In the back-and-forth confrontation with The Sun, the effect was not only to increase the popularity of the Woaw website, but also to increase the circulation of both The Independent and London Evening Standard - of course, since The Sun was so "cooperative", it was also because they also gained popularity.
It is no wonder that after the rise of short video live streaming, many internet celebrities, who openly fight with each other all day long, may all belong to the same MCN company behind the scenes...
"In the Cavendish Building project, we will use steel structure for construction. This construction method is now relatively mature and has advantages in terms of efficiency and environmental protection."
The bidding for the Cavendish Building has been completed and construction is about to begin. Amber, who is in charge of the entire matter, also reported the specific situation to Barron.
Just as he said, there are already many buildings that use steel structures, which is a current trend in building construction.
The main reason is that, in addition to being more environmentally friendly than reinforced concrete structures, steel-structured buildings are also faster to build.
For example, in Barron's previous life, China used steel structures and standardized modules to build a building with more than 60 floors in 19 days.
When Barron first heard the news, he was quite surprised and looked into it.
This is not an exaggeration, because the so-called 19 days is just the time to build those standardized modules, and the time it takes to produce these modules in the factory is much longer than this - if the production time is added together, it will be more than a year...
However, at this time, steel-structured buildings still mainly exist outside of China, and buildings built in China still all use reinforced concrete structures.
The reason for this is, of course, that steel structure buildings are much more expensive than reinforced concrete buildings.
From the perspective of the Chinese project party, their labor costs are much cheaper than those abroad, and they can hire more construction workers during construction. In this way, even for a reinforced concrete building, it will not take much more time, but the cost will be much lower.
But in Europe and the United States, the labor costs of construction workers are very high, so they have good reasons to choose steel-structured buildings. They can use fewer workers and save time. In this way, steel-structured buildings are a good choice.
But even so, it will take 6-7 months until the Cavendish Building is completed and ready for use...
"Mr. Sheen, there is something you need to do in person next - I'm afraid you will need to be away on business for a while."
After hearing Barron's words, Amber knew that since he said that, it must be a very important matter, so he immediately replied:
"No problem, Your Highness. What's the matter?"
"I want you to go to Johannesburg, South Africa, and talk to the South African newspaper industry about buying their shares in a Chinese company called Penguin."
Amber Sheehan previously worked at PwC and helped Barron's acquire Independent Newspapers. He is now in charge of the industrial investment department of DS Capital, so it is most appropriate to entrust this matter to him.
Last year, affected by the bursting of the Internet bubble, HK Little Superman, who had invested in Penguin and held 20% of its shares, intended to sell his shares in Penguin.
The company that bought these shares at that time was the South African MIH Group, which currently holds 46.5% of Penguin's shares. South African Press is the parent company of the South African MIH Group.
At the beginning, Little Superman's Digital Yingke and the American venture capital company IDG invested a total of US$2.2 million in Penguin, each holding 20% of its shares.
Last year, Superman sold its 20% stake to South Africa's MIH Group for US$12.6 million, earning more than 11 times the initial investment. At the same time, IDG, which had little confidence in the future development of Penguin Inc. due to the bursting of the Internet bubble, also sold more than 13% of its 20% stake in Penguin Inc. For this, South Africa's MIH Group paid a total of less than US$21 million and obtained 33% of Penguin Inc.'s shares.
Next, in June of this year, South Africa's MIH Group acquired another 13.5% of the shares from other founders of Penguin. So far, they held 46.5% of the shares of Penguin, spending a total of approximately US$32 million, or more than 20 million pounds.
So at this time, Barron is ready to try to buy the shares of Penguin held by South African Newspapers - you know, at its peak in the future, the market value of Penguin is close to one trillion US dollars. Even if the shareholding ratio decreases after the subsequent financing, at that time, the shares of Penguin held by South African MIH Group will be worth more than 300 billion US dollars!
"According to my investigation, North and South Newspapers now holds 46.5% of Penguin's shares. They paid about 32 million US dollars for it. I hope you can try to buy these shares. I am willing to pay up to twice the premium. Of course, it is best to buy these shares at the lowest price."
Hearing that Barron was willing to pay such a high premium to buy Penguin's shares, Amber couldn't help but be secretly surprised. You know, the Internet bubble crisis just passed, but there is still no sign of recovery...
The Nasdaq's technology stocks, which had been on a stable trend, experienced another decline starting in September. Their DS Capital took advantage of this opportunity to complete the building of positions in all technology stocks.
Although this step shows that his boss is optimistic about the future recovery of technology stocks, at this time, his willingness to purchase shares of a company called Penguin at a double premium still shows that he is very optimistic about the company.
Therefore, Amber decided to collect some information about Penguin Company after returning, make adequate preparations, go to Johannesburg, and try his best to buy the company's shares from South African newspapers to complete the task given to him by his boss.
As for now, would the South African newspaper industry be willing to sell Penguin?
If it happens later, it may not be successful, but at this point in time, it is still very possible.
Because the first investment in Penguin was based on the optimism of the vice president of China business of South Africa's MIH Group. If we had gone to negotiate with the Chinese branch of MIH Group, I'm afraid they might not agree; but if we gave the other party enough returns, it would still be possible to talk directly with their parent company, South African Newspapers.
You know, from the name of South African Newspapers, it can be seen that this company was originally a newspaper company - they are the largest media company in Africa, but later in 1997, after the new CEO Kus Becker took office, they expanded their business scope and shifted to the technology field, such as television station business and telecommunications operators.
Investing in Penguin was their first venture capital investment in the Internet. Before that, they had no experience in venture capital business.
It can be said that they were extremely lucky as they won a jackpot on their first investment - but also because of this, it does not rule out that they are willing to exit the investment after obtaining satisfactory returns.