I Become A Noble in England

On February 15, when Barron was on the plane returning to Melbourne from California, he received a piece of news.

The night before, David Smith, who had been cared for in the hospital, died due to the negligence of the nurse and the failure of the first aid equipment.

According to the investigation by the American police, the caregiver who was taking care of him that day was a drug addict. When the police found him, he had already died of an overdose.

In the end, the accident was determined to be manslaughter, with no other doubts.

David Smith's wife, children, and other brothers also had doubts about this, but the police had already reached a conclusion and there was nothing more to investigate, so they had to give up.

After David Smith's death, because both of his children were under the age of 18, one vote in the family trust was temporarily inherited by his widow Sally Smith, and the other vote was inherited by the widow of Julian Sinclair Smith, John Smith's biological mother.

In this way, John Smith's "current three siblings" alliance obtained four votes from the family trust and gained control of the Sinclair Group shares it held.

Under such circumstances, the Sinclair Family Trust signed an agreement with Blue Valley Capital to sell their 20% stake in MGM Holdings to the other party for US$450 million. Although they participated in the acquisition of MGM last year and spent US$540 million to acquire these shares and the broadcasting rights of some films in the MGM film library, they would rather lose some money now and need to resolve the crisis of these mortgaged shares.

After receiving $450 million, the Sinclair Family Trust will be able to return the Bank of New York Mellon and get back their pledged Sinclair Group shares.

At the same time, Sinclair Group's shareholders, such as DS Capital and IC Capital, stated that they would purchase a total of US$250 million worth of Sinclair Group convertible bonds. The company will use the funds obtained to integrate its business and make corresponding investments. What has been disclosed so far is that Sinclair Group will acquire an Internet company with exclusive technology in the field of big data to increase their advertising business revenue.

After this news was revealed, Sinclair Group's stock price finally rose for the first time after more than two months of decline. A few days later, the stock price reached US$22.5 and gradually stabilized.

As for Blue Valley Capital, after buying 20% ​​of MGM's shares from the Sinclair Family Trust, it did not take any further action.

Their main job at the moment is still to help Summit Entertainment and Marvel Pictures with film production.

At this time in the United States, in addition to Woaw Technology's roadshow before its IPO, LOMX Group also started the process of listing on Nasdaq in accordance with the agreement with Nasdaq Group.

At the same time, Nasdaq Group will also be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

This time, LOMX Group will issue new shares accounting for 15% of the total share capital after issuance for public sale. The funds obtained will be mainly used to acquire the Italian Stock Exchange.

Of course, although the two parties have reached an agreement on the price for LOMX Group's acquisition of the Italian Stock Exchange, it still needs to wait for the antitrust review from the European Union and Italy.

LOMX Group has been actively communicating with the other party and promised that after the acquisition is completed, the business of the Italian exchange will still comply with local and EU regulations and be supervised by regulators.

It is expected that around May this year, after the LOMX Group completes its listing on NASDAQ, their acquisition of the Italian Stock Exchange should have results.

For this IPO, the issue price of LOMX Group is temporarily set in the range of US$4.75-5. At this time, the total share capital of LOMX Group is 1.7 billion shares. With the 300 million new shares to be publicly issued, the total share capital after the IPO will be 2 billion shares.

Based on the issue price of US$5, the market value of LOMX Group will reach US$10 billion after listing.

It can be said that this year, many companies under Barron's will start to go public one after another. In April, companies including O2 Telecom and Argos Retail Group will also start the listing process one after another. Both companies will choose the London Stock Exchange for listing.

…

When Barron and his team returned to London, it was already March.

After this period of recuperation in Australia, it is obvious that Bonnie's complexion has improved a lot.

Her due date is less than two months away, so she needs to be extremely careful and prepare for the birth of her baby in London.

Barron went to the O2 building in King's Cross.

O2 Telecom will start the IPO process next month. In order to get a satisfactory stock price, there is still a lot of work to be done before that.

After acquiring Czech Telecom, O2 Telecom began to enter the Eastern European market and developed rapidly there.

So far, O2 Telecom has become one of the largest mobile operators in Europe, with a total of more than 40 million European users - about 17 million users in the UK market, more than 15 million users in Ireland, France and Germany, and about 8 million users in the Eastern European market, mainly in the Czech Republic...

Especially in the French and German markets, O2 Telecom took advantage of the increasingly improved mobile and broadband networks there and implemented a low-cost family package strategy to crush their local mobile operators, directly reducing their average tariffs by a large margin.

For this reason, some operators even accused O2 Telecom of "dumping at low prices", but O2 Telecom's counterattack from the moral high ground of "everything for consumers" actually improved O2 Telecom's image in the public's mind.

Taking advantage of its current large user base, O2 Telecom not only saves on communication fees, but also earns considerable income by customizing mobile phones through Honor Electronics and other Chinese mobile phone manufacturers - such as Huaxia Electronics which has obtained the Philips brand - and selling them to consumers.

At the earliest time, O2 Telecom once issued corporate bonds with a total value of 1 billion pounds and an annual interest rate of 3.5% to the public. As of now, these corporate bonds have been fully repaid after more than two years through their profit income...

Compared with the first two years after being acquired by DS Capital, O2 Telecom's financial data has greatly improved in the previous year.

At this time, they still have a killer weapon in their hands, which is the exclusive sales rights of Apple's iPhone.

The research and development project for the first generation iPhone began in 2004, when Apple assembled more than 1,000 internal employees to form a highly confidential team code-named "Project Purple."

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

The team is composed of experts from multiple fields such as hardware, software, and design. They are separated into different office areas, and even the company's senior executives don't know what they are doing.

Apple's CEO at the time, Steve Jobs' original idea was to develop a tablet computer similar to the iPad, but later he changed his mind and decided to enter the smartphone field.

In order to develop a product that could disrupt the traditional mobile phone market, Apple secretly collaborated with American operator AT&T.

AT&T invested money in the iPhone project and gave Apple great freedom to develop the iPhone's hardware and software.

In exchange, Apple guaranteed that the iPhone would be sold exclusively by AT&T in the U.S. market for four years.

As mentioned before, the sale of mobile phones in Europe and the United States is different from that in China. Generally, users first sign a network agreement with the operator, and then choose to purchase the mobile phone device under the contract through the operator.

In Barron's previous life, AT&T's cooperation with Apple reaped huge rewards.

In the first few years after the iPhone was launched, AT&T had the upper hand in its competition with its rival, Verizon, one of the largest mobile operators in the United States, through its exclusive sales contract.

O2 Telecom did not miss this opportunity. Last year, O2 Telecom CEO Barry Trelles personally went to America to meet with Jobs.

They provided Apple with a two-year, $100 million funding for its iPhone development project, codenamed "Purple 2," and in doing so obtained exclusive sales agreements for iPhones in markets including the UK, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Through this agreement, O2 Telecom will be able to obtain exclusive sales rights for iPhone and related mobile devices in the above markets after Apple launches the iPhone in the future.

It can be imagined that with this exclusive sales right, O2 Telecom will usher in even faster development in these markets.

Of course, these effects will not be apparent until a year later. Currently, O2 Telecom's upcoming IPO is also attracting much attention.