On December 5, Bonnie Stuart, wearing a gun-gray women's suit showing her noble temperament, came to Buckingham Palace and received the Queen's award.
This time, the Queen personally awarded her the title of Knight Second Class (CBE) in recognition of her contributions to the promotion of British culture in the fields of publishing and television program production.
It can be said that in addition to Barron's efforts, Bonnie's achievements were also real in earning her knighthood.
Since she became a producer, she has launched variety shows and TV series such as "The Traitors", "Downton Abbey", "Love Island", "Strictly Come Dancing" and "Sparkling Life". It can be said that each of them has become a well-known British IP. In addition, she is also one of the authors of the "Downton Abbey" novel, which has a high influence in Europe and the United States...
With such achievements, there is really nothing wrong with being awarded an honor by the Queen.
From then on, "Lady" needed to be added before Bonnie Stuart's official title to indicate her status as a dame.
To this end, Barron hosted a dinner at his villa in Kensington to celebrate Bonnie Stuart's knighthood.
During the party, Bonnie kept smiling, and her achievements and status at that time were indeed enviable.
"Prince Walid and the beautiful princess, welcome..."
Prince Alwaleed and Princess Amina also came to London for this banquet because he happened to have something to deal with. The second episode of "Shining Life" produced by Bonnie's Giant Studio interviewed Alwaleed and his wife, so she also had a good relationship with Princess Amina.
"I heard you are planning to launch a new fund, is that right?"
"Yes, it can also be considered a fixed-income product…"
DS Capital's fixed income products previously mainly included the Athena Fund, with funds used for quantitative trading in the securities market.
Therefore, the Athena Fund belongs to DS Investment Company, which is managed by Daisy.
DS Capital's equity investment is mainly carried out by DS Holdings managed by Amber Sheehan, and all the funds used are DS Capital's own funds.
The Caesar Fund newly launched by DS Capital is also a fund with a fixed income of 10-12%. The funds are used for equity investment in companies, similar to the Global Industrial Investment Fund.
The Caesar Fund is also managed by DS Investment Company, but it has relative independence.
In fact, the reason for setting up such a fund, in addition to the same purpose as the GII fund, is to use investors' funds to carry out industrial layout, but also to hide funds.
Yes, Barron's previous profits from crude oil futures and initial principal totaled $8 billion (after gradually selling off the Summit Media shares that he had taken over at the previous price of 20 pounds, the total funds were close to $8.2 billion), and Barron was not planning to invest these funds in the name of DS Capital in order to hide part of the assets.
However, this type of offshore company has a disadvantage when making investments. When companies in many important industries make acquisitions, the government always has to conduct a series of audits, so funds from unknown sources will be restricted.
So Barron's solution to this situation was to set up this Caesar Fund in the name of DS Capital to carry out industrial layout...
These funds are invested into the Caesar Fund in the name of investment, and the Caesar Fund can then use them for investment and acquisition.
In this case, in addition to the funds in these offshore companies, the Caesar Fund must also absorb some funds from other investors, which are all incidental...
"Our Caesar Fund mainly invests in equity, so unlike the Athena Fund, it needs to have a longer lock-up period, usually 3-5 years."
This is easy to understand. The average fixed return for 3 years is 10%, the average fixed return for 4 years is 11%, and the average fixed return for 5 years is 12%...
"To be honest, Your Highness, I'm not very interested in this kind of fixed-income investment. If it's something like the Mars Fund... I would be more willing to participate. But I'll help you tell other people about it. I'm sure there will be many people interested in this."
After all, Barron is in a different position now than when he first founded DS Capital and launched fund products.
Judging from his investment performance over the years, it can be said that he is already quite convincing in the eyes of investors.
Therefore, he no longer needs to offer too high a rate of return to attract funds, and he does not need to take measures to protect the principal to reassure investors as before...
"Okay, Mr. Walid, but the total amount raised by our Caesar Fund this time is only 10 billion US dollars, and now there is less than 2 billion US dollars left."
"So soon?"
Prince Walid was surprised to hear Barron's words. After all, the news of the establishment of this new fund had just been announced, and it had already raised more than 8 billion US dollars in funds. This was indeed amazing.
But when he thought of Barron's extraordinary success rate in investment in the past, he could feel relieved.
…
In fact, even if the newly launched Caesars Fund is added to the current DS Investment Company, the total assets managed by their current fund companies, plus proprietary funds, have just reached more than 10 billion euros. This is far less than the total assets of 90 billion euros managed by the Rothschild family.
Not to mention that in Barron's previous life, the total assets managed by the later BlackRock Group had exceeded 10 trillion US dollars...
So we are still far from the top players in the capital market.
As the CEO of Caesars Fund, Barron hired Petter Friedman, who previously served as vice president of CVC Capital, a top European private equity fund, and also had experience working at the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global.
Well, it is worth mentioning that CVC Capital is the fund that Barron worked with Bernie Ecclestone to buy the F1 Group in his previous life...
After Pat Friedman took office, Caesars Fund started its first acquisition - purchasing shares of British logistics giant EXEL from the secondary market.
British Express Logistics is the largest logistics company in the UK besides the state-owned Royal Mail. It was mainly formed in 2000 by the merger of Ocean Group and NFC.
EXEL is a global logistics company with 1,300 locations worldwide and more than 50,000 employees.
British Logistics' current market value is around 2.5 billion pounds, and it mainly owns three operating companies, namely Exel (the old NFC), Msas Global Logistics and Cory Environmental.
Msas is one of the largest freight forwarders in the world, providing services such as multimodal transport, regional distribution, inventory control, value-added logistics, information technology and supply chain solutions on a global scale.
Cory Environmental is one of the largest waste management companies in the UK.
Exel has a strong market position in ground transportation supply chain services, including warehousing and distribution, transportation management services, customer-centric services, JIT services and global aftermarket logistics services.
In addition to purchasing shares of British Logistics in the secondary market, Caesar Fund also began to contact the company's shareholders, preparing to acquire their shares at a premium.