On August 6, Bank of Communications and Standard Chartered Bank officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement.
According to the agreement, Standard Chartered Bank invested 14.461 billion Chinese yuan, or about 1.747 billion US dollars, in Bank of Communications, holding 7.775 billion shares, accounting for 19.9% of the shares.
The equity ratio is close to the 20% upper limit for a single foreign institution to hold shares in China Construction Bank, making it the second largest shareholder of Bank of Communications after the Ministry of Finance.
Part of Standard Chartered Bank's capital injection was in the form of foreign exchange, while the other part was replaced by the resources they provided to Bank of Communications.
The signing ceremony of the strategic cooperation between Standard Chartered Bank and Bank of Communications was personally attended by Standard Chartered Bank's Chairman and CEO of Greater China, Zeng Jingxuan. She said in an interview:
"This is an exciting opportunity for us to develop a dual-brand credit card. The names of both Bank of Communications and Standard Chartered Bank will be printed on the card. We definitely have huge development potential in this field."
She was referring to one of the cooperation agreements between the two large banks, which is that Bank of Communications will set up an independently operated credit card center with Standard Chartered Bank. With the help of Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of Communications will be able to reach internationally advanced levels in this business and take over the use of Standard Chartered Bank's international credit card customers in China.
After Standard Chartered Bank acquires a stake in Bank of Communications, the core capital adequacy ratio of Bank of Communications calculated in accordance with international accounting standards will reach 8.43%, and the capital adequacy ratio will reach 11.62%.
According to the agreement, Standard Chartered Bank will send two directors and provide technical support and services in risk management, corporate governance and internal control, financial management, asset-liability management, and human resources management.
This time, the modernization reform of Bank of Communications will follow the three-step process of "financial restructuring - introducing foreign capital - public listing". The first two steps have been completed, and what will be carried out next is the process of public listing.
According to senior executives of Bank of Communications, in-depth cooperation with Standard Chartered Bank will help Bank of Communications achieve standardization of management and become an "accelerator" for their eventual listing.
From now on, Bank of Communications has started the listing work and formulated an overall listing plan. It is expected that the listing in Hong Kong will be completed in the first half of next year.
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"We have purchased a total of 14.9% of Fast Retailing Group shares through several cooperative institutions at the two stock exchanges in Hiroshima and Tokyo..."
On the phone, Finn Hudson, CEO of Global Industrial Investment Fund (GII Fund), reported to Barron's on the progress of their acquisition of Uniqlo.
Uniqlo's parent company is Japan's Fast Retailing Group, which was listed on the Hiroshima Stock Exchange in 1994 and on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1997.
According to the investigation, the Yanai Zheng family, the founder of Fast Retailing Group, currently holds approximately 31% of Fast Retailing Group's shares; Japan Trust Bank holds 20.58% of the shares; Japan Custody Bank holds 13.78% of the shares; and the remaining shares are held by other shareholders and circulated in the secondary market.
Because at this time the GII Fund had not yet publicly announced its intention to acquire Uniqlo's parent company, Fast Retailing, the other party's shares they acquired from the secondary market were all held by several other institutions including its partners Standard Chartered Bank and Goldman Sachs Group, and no bids had been raised for acquisition.
Therefore, on the one hand, they will still try to acquire as many shares of Fast Retailing Group as possible in the Hiroshima and Tokyo stock markets.
In addition, it will also contact the small shareholders of Fast Retailing Group and the two Japanese banks that hold a large proportion of their shares, and try to acquire their shares.
Currently, the total market value of Fast Retailing Group is around US$2.7 billion, which is not too high, but in Japan, it does require some strategies to complete this acquisition.
As the founder of Uniqlo, Tadashi Yanai revealed his retirement plan as early as in "One Win, Nine Losses" published in 2003.
He was only 54 years old at the time. In his book, he said that compared with his heyday, his physical strength and energy had begun to decline. He hoped that after withdrawing from the front line of management, he could focus on his investment career and spend his later years in peace.
In fact, in his early years, Masaru Yanai was deeply influenced by the management philosophy of American retail enterprises. In management, he neither advocated the "one-man rule" of the operator nor intended to let his business inheritance be restricted by family relationships. This was already very advanced in Japanese corporate management at that time.
After that, he found two "successors", namely Takashi Sawada and Genichi Tamatsuka, who used to work at IBM. However, before that, Takashi Sawada rejected Tadashi Yanai's invitation to become the president of Uniqlo and left Fast Retailing Group.
The current president of Fast Retailing Group is Genichi Tamatsuka, another successor favored by Tadashi Yanai, but he will also resign next year due to the decline in Fast Retailing Group's performance.
Although Tadashi Yanai has now "retired to the second line", he still has a great influence on Fast Retailing Group. In the original time and space, he will be in charge of the military sales group again next year and will last for nearly 20 years.
Hence the saying "Yanagi Zheng is permanent, but his successors come and go" came into being.
It can also be seen from here that although Fast Retailing Group has gradually recovered from the crisis two or three years ago, the group's sales performance this year will still not be satisfactory, which will lead to the resignation of the current president, Motoichi Tamatsuka, next year.
At this time, if the GII Fund can offer a suitable price, it is not impossible to buy the company's shares from other shareholders.
After all, other people would not predict that Tadashi Yanai would return to the position of head of the group next year, and at this time, Genichi Tamatsuka does not seem to be doing a good job as the president of Fast Retailing Group.
Fast Retailing Group has not grown rapidly due to its success overseas, especially in the Chinese market.
At this time, they were also facing a lot of competition in Japan, and the prospects were not optimistic.
The only thing Barron needs to consider now is whether he needs to "go to war" with the Yanai Zheng family to compete for the control of Uniqlo and its parent company if he can acquire other shares?
After all, from the experience of the past life, after 2005, Uniqlo, or Fast Retailing Group, has always been under the leadership of Yanai Zheng, and has expanded wildly, eventually surpassing Zara's parent company Inditex Group to become the world's largest clothing sales company.
You know, Yanai Zheng is 55 years old now. Even if he is allowed to lead Fast Retailing Group, he will need to retire in 20 years at most...
Therefore, Barron finally decided to first try to get enough shares...preferably more than 50% of the shares, and then confront the Yanai Zheng family to see whether he should be their controlling investor or directly seize power.