After Barron returned to London, he gave a reply to the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group. Regarding the acquisition of Unocal, they believed that United Energy Group was not yet ready for an acquisition of this scale and needed to wait and see for the time being and conduct further evaluation.
This is not to say that Barron is really not interested in United Energy Group's acquisition of Unocal Corporation of the United States. After all, if this acquisition can be completed, the benefits to United Energy Group are obvious. United Energy Group plus Unocal Corporation is definitely a combination of one plus one greater than two.
However, the results of the previous investigation into Unocal's shareholders and the capital behind them indeed confirmed some of Barron's speculations...
On the surface, Unocal does not have much relationship with capitals including Vanguard Group and BlackRock Group, but in fact, many of Unocal's shareholders have Vanguard Group behind them.
It is speculated that Vanguard Group and its "allies" control at least 20% of Unocal's shares.
This explains why Goldman Sachs is so active in this matter. In addition to wanting to earn profits including service fees and financing interest in the process of helping United Energy Group acquire Unocal, Vanguard Group is probably not satisfied with just its current 5.8% stake in United Energy Group, but wants to acquire more United Energy Group shares through this acquisition of Unocal.
After all, such a merger of nearly 20 billion US dollars cannot be acquired entirely in cash, and stock swap is also a necessary means...
Exchanging Unocal shares for United Energy Group shares would be more tempting for Leading Capital!
Because a little analysis will show that the merger of Chevron and Unocal will have less complementarity than CNOOC and United Energy Group. The merger of the two will inevitably have overlapping business departments.
Making a choice among these is like when you go back to the time when Google just went public and you take out the same amount of money to choose to buy Microsoft or Google stock. I'm afraid everyone will know how to choose.
In this case, Barron is not in a hurry to let United Energy Group join the acquisition too quickly.
After all, compared with Chevron, United Energy Group and CNOOC have one biggest disadvantage, that is, they are both foreign-funded enterprises.
In the process of acquiring Unocal, both United Energy Group and CNOOC will inevitably lead to the US authorities reviewing their acquisitions to see whether they will affect "national security."
In the original time and space, the fact that CNOOC's acquisition of Unocal would threaten America's "national security" was ridiculous...
First of all, Unocal's oil production in the United States accounts for less than one-third of its total production and less than 1/100 of its total sales in the United States.
In addition, Unocal's international oil and gas are not sold in the United States.
Secondly, the United States has strategic resource reserves, but it implements a bidding system. Unocal has never participated in a bid. Moreover, Unocal does not have downstream refining and chemical businesses and does not provide chemicals, fuel, and aviation fuel to the U.S. government or military.
The oil industry technology used by Unocal cannot be used in the military, and Unocal also has no agreement to provide services to the U.S. government and military.
Therefore, from the perspective of American national security, there is absolutely no problem with this acquisition.
But in the end, for various reasons, they still did not hesitate to amend their energy bill to prevent CNOOC's acquisition.
Although in these aspects, United Energy Group is a British company - and Britain and the United States are still the closest allies at this time, therefore, the US officials are unlikely to have such a strong reaction to the question of "posing a threat to US national security" faced by CNOOC on the United Energy Group's side.
But in the final analysis, Chevron still has great advantages in these aspects - after all, it is an American company.
United Energy Group's acquisition of Unocal will face an additional review from the United States, while Chevron only needs to deal with antitrust review.
Although Unocal and Chevron are both ranked among the top American oil companies in terms of size, Unocal itself does not have many businesses in the United States, so it is not difficult for it to pass antitrust review in this acquisition.
In addition, a certain proportion of stock replacement is also required in the acquisition, but the replacement plan can still be discussed on a wide scale.
Since these things exist, Barron does not need to let United Energy Group appear to be too proactive in this acquisition.
But at the same time, there will be no explicit rejection.
The best option is to just hold a wait-and-see attitude, and then join the acquisition after Vanguard Group and Goldman Sachs show some sincerity, so that they can use their resources in the United States to help United Energy Group solve all kinds of problems.
However, before that, United Energy Group also needs to solve some of its funding problems and prepare for subsequent acquisitions in advance - the acquisition of Unocal will require US$17.5-18.5 billion. Even if a certain proportion of payment can be made in the form of stocks, and even if there is financing from investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, the more funds they can come up with, the better.
…
The home of Earl Bute was still very lively. After all, there were three children now. The two twins were already over one year old, and Barron's "seed", Chris's daughter Ethel, was about to be one year old...
Of course, even the Countess has a very attractive figure...
But she certainly could not provide food for the three children. In fact, the Earl's family had a special "wet nurse" for this purpose, and there was more than one, so the Countess did not have to bear any of this.
After hiding in the bedroom, Barron and the Countess went through a series of sweaty knowledge learning sessions. After taking a shower and simply tidying up, they returned to the living room refreshed and chatted.
And Earl Bute also appeared "at the right time" at this time and talked about business matters with Barron.
"As you said, Argent Real Estate Group does meet the conditions for listing, but is it really necessary?"
Barron asked in surprise when he heard Duke Bute mention that Argent Real Estate Group was planning to go public through an IPO.