At this time, foreign investment was restricted in China. Although Argos Holdings wanted to take advantage of Supor's listing to subscribe to its issued public shares, it was unable to subscribe because foreign companies were restricted from purchasing A-shares.
However, the advantage of Barron's previous acquisition of Standard Chartered Bank was also reflected. As one of the first 12 qualified foreign investors (QFII) announced in July last year, Standard Chartered Bank can directly purchase A-share listed stocks.
In this IPO, Supor will publicly issue 34 million shares, of which Standard Chartered Bank subscribed for 13.4 million shares, accounting for 9.9% of Supor's total share capital after listing...
Because according to Hua Xia's regulations at that time, a single QFII institution could not hold more than 10% of the total share capital of an A-share listed company.
In this way, with Supor's issue price of 12.21 yuan per share and another 164 million yuan, after Supor goes public, Argos Holdings and Standard Chartered Bank's proxy holdings will hold a total of 21.15% of the company's shares.
The Su Zengfu family, which controls Supor at this time, will see its shareholding ratio diluted to 41.25% after the listing.
Although Argos Holdings and its affiliates further increased their stakes through Supor's listing, Barron's is not prepared to complete the fight for control of Supor through a hostile takeover.
After all, Supor is one of the partners of Argos Retail Group. If they use a hostile takeover to drive away its original founder, it will inevitably have a negative impact on other companies cooperating with them.
In fact, Barron knew from his memories of his previous life that the Su Zengfu family had no intention of holding Supor for a long time. In the original time and space, in 2006, just two years after Supor went public, they sold most of the company's shares to the French SEB Group, thus giving up the controlling rights of the company.
After that, their family continued to reduce their holdings in Supor, and finally their shareholding was less than 0.01%, almost completely withdrawing from the company.
In this case, Barron can also purchase Supor shares held by the Su Zengfu family at an appropriate time.
The purpose of their current increase in Supor shares is to have more say in the company to avoid it being acquired by the French SEB Group as in the past.
…
In February, when Barron came to Shanghai, he bought a luxury house here, which is Yan Family Garden located at No. 699 Yuyuan Road.
Before leaving Shanghai last time, he had completed the transaction and hired a professional decoration company to carry out overall renovation of Yan's Garden.
Now four months have passed. When Barron and his team visited the construction site of Yan Family Garden again, they could see that the renovation work was proceeding in full swing.
"It's really rare to have such a house in Shanghai. I can only imagine how magnificent it will be after the renovation is completed."
"When this place is finished, I will definitely invite you to be my guest."
Barron said with a smile to the man next to him who looked to be in his early thirties, wearing glasses and was rather unprepossessing.
"Then I'll make a note of it, Your Highness."
"I welcome all capable people to have my respect, Martin."
Barron extended his hand to the other party and said kindly:
"Also, welcome to join us, Martin. You know, because of this matter, Mr. Blankfein called me specifically to complain. He said that you are the most promising employee of Goldman Sachs Asia, and I shouldn't take you away..."
He raised his eyebrows, showing a happy expression, and continued:
"I told him, unfortunately, I think so too..."
The man who won Barron's praise was named Liu Chiping.
Liu Chiping, 31 years old, is from Hong Kong, China. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, and two master's degrees from Stanford University and Northwestern University.
After graduation, Liu Chiping worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and later became the Chief Operating Officer of the Telecommunications, Media and Technology Industry Group of Goldman Sachs' Asian Investment Banking Department.
He has now been appointed as vice president of Rich23 Capital, responsible for the investment company's equity investment affairs, including Chinese Internet companies such as Penguin, in which Rich23 Capital currently holds shares, as well as liaisons with Pioneer Sports Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Apple and Argos Retail Group.
Chen Fuyang, who was previously appointed as CEO of Rich23 Capital, told Barron's that he hoped to focus more on the operation of Avago, rather than taking into account Rich23 Capital's investment in China Company as before. Therefore, Barron's made adjustments to Rich Capital.
For example, Chen Fuyang still serves as the president of Rich23 Capital, but he is mainly responsible for the operation of Broadcom. Other equity investment matters are handled by Vice President Liu Chiping, who reports directly to Baron's office.
In fact, in the original time and space, Liu Chiping had another identity, that is, the future president of Penguin Company.
The only difference now is that the sponsor and underwriter for Penguin's IPO has become Standard Chartered Bank, instead of Goldman Sachs Asia as in the past.
Originally, Liu Chiping was working on the IPO project of Penguin Company at Goldman Sachs Asia. Pony Ma was very impressed by Liu Chiping's talent. During this process, Liu Chiping also felt the excellence of Penguin Company. Therefore, in 2005, he accepted Pony Ma's invitation and became the Chief Strategic Investment Officer of Penguin Company, responsible for strategy, investment, mergers and acquisitions, and investor relations.
Prior to this, Penguin Company rarely used external investment methods in its development. Instead, it incubated projects by investing in internal R&D departments. It can be said that it did whatever was popular and did not have a clear plan for the overall strategy.
Although Penguin is still the largest Internet company in China in terms of user scale, products and profitability, its growth has obviously slowed down - it cannot beat NetEase in games, it cannot compete with Baidu in advertising, and even the most important telecommunications value-added service in terms of revenue has become its last supper.
In Pony Ma's view, the question is how Penguin Company can continue to maintain high growth in the next step.
So in 2005 in the original time and space, Pony set its sights on Liu Chiping, who worked for Goldman Sachs and had previously worked at McKinsey. Both in terms of ability and experience, he was the talent Pony needed.
Finally, inspired by Pony, Liu Chiping was willing to give up his annual salary of tens of millions and joined Penguin, taking over the capital operation and strategic work. Later, he gradually replaced Pony and took full responsibility for the company's business management.
As for whether Penguin can continue to develop smoothly in the future after Liu Chiping joined Rich23 Capital, Barron plans to wait and see.
After Liu Chiping joins Rich23 Capital, they will establish Rich23 Capital's Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong, China, to fully cover investment business in the region.
This will be another investment empire for Barron besides DS Capital.
…
On June 25, Liu Chiping first went to Hangzhou to visit Boss Ma. In the last round of financing, Rich23 Capital acquired 20% of Alibaba's shares, and when Taobao was struggling to survive in the face of competition from Eachnet, which was backed by the well-funded eBay, it invested another 50 million US dollars and acquired a total of 50% of Taobao's shares.
Yes, at that time, Taobao did not belong to Alibaba, or in other words, it was not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba...