Guo Dongyun's Hong Kong Treasure Island Trading Company and its financial advisor, Aberdeen Asset Management, formally submitted a non-binding letter of intent to acquire ARM at a price of 5.55-5.95 pounds per share. If ARM spun off its Ikon computer business, the letter of intent would offer a price of 4.8-5.1 pounds per share. ARM was also requested to provide information to understand and evaluate its situation and performance.
At this time, Guo Dongyun had reached an agreement with the Italian Olivetti Group. Once Hong Kong Treasure Island Trading Company successfully acquired ARM, it would invest in Olivetti Group's Omnitel and work together to operate mobile communications.
This was the last condition proposed by Olivetti Group. The rapid expansion of the entire industry chain, coupled with Omnitel, had overwhelmed Olivetti Group.
At the same time, Hong Kong Treasure Island Trading Company paid US $9 million for 20% of Apple's shares.
As for VLSI, a small company that was still a workshop, Guo Dongyun directly acquired it for US $6 million.
After Li He heard this, he thought he was hallucinating. This meant that he might be able to acquire the technology of a large scale integrated circuit.
The so-called integrated circuit, to put it crudely, was to find a way to squeeze tens of thousands or even tens of millions of transistors and diodes into a semiconductor monocrystal, making it into a chip with specific circuit or system functions.
Before the use of integrated circuits, the so-called electronic equipment was stupid. The world's first computer, ENIAC, appeared in the United States in 1946. It weighed more than 30 tons, covered more than 150 square meters, and was composed of 17468 electron tubes, 60,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, and 6,000 switches.
Using integrated circuit technology, an electronic sub-system or even the entire electronic system could be "integrated" on a chip to complete information collection, processing, storage, and other functions.
Therefore, with the advancement of technology, the size of various electronic products became smaller and lighter.
Fairchild Semiconductor, which first commercialized integrated circuit technology in 1959, had incubated companies such as Intel, AMD, National Semiconductor, LSI,
Logic, Intersil, Altera, Xilinx, and many other industry giants.
Similarly, VLSI
Technology also originated from Fairchild.
There were not many companies in the world with large scale integrated circuit technology, and VLSI happened to be one of them.
However, there was no invincible general in the world. Being able to summon the wind and summon the rain did not mean that one could be the overlord forever. After that, the semiconductor industry went through intense competition. Other than Intel and Memory, most of the manufacturers were half-dead. VLSI was just a flash in the pan. Even NEC, which had always been the number one semiconductor manufacturer, was squeezed out of the top ten.
Li He was afraid that his participation in VLSI would bring about a major change. He did not care if VLSI died or not. He did not care if VLSI died earlier or later. What he cared about was whether VLSI would be able to develop a large-scale integrated circuit!
The majority shareholders had already agreed to the acquisition of ARM by Hong Kong's Treasure Island Trading. ARM's management had no choice but to express their willingness to discuss the acquisition. After all parties signed a confidentiality agreement, Treasure Island Trading provided the relevant information and the management introduced the company's situation.
ARM held its regular annual shareholders meeting. Some minority shareholders wanted to raise the offer to 6.2 pounds per share.
But ARM's M&A adviser, Barclays, told the board meeting that from a financial point of view, the £5.91 per share cash offer was a fair price.
The fairness opinion issued by Barclays settled most people's disputes.
The closing conditions for the acquisition included obtaining the shareholders' meeting's approval. In addition to the £45 million share acquisition, Treasure Island Trading also needed to provide ARM with £130 million in debt financing.
During the financial war with Soros, the entire UK and even the world knew that Treasure Island Trading had a lot of money. It would be unreasonable if ARM did not take advantage of this opportunity.
As Guo Dongyun and others expected, Li He agreed to everything. At the same time, he generously provided the founders and researchers with no more than 10% of the shares.
Continue to maintain ARM's basic business, retain the existing management, and provide authorization to external chip design companies.
But Li He had a different opinion about investing in Omnitel.
He did not want to be a minority shareholder. He asked for the controlling stake, and Olivetti rejected without hesitation.
He then proposed to provide guaranteed loans to Omnitel to help with large-scale mergers and acquisitions in Europe, as well as with Odyssey.
He also proposed to compete with Odyssey, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, and other telecom giants.
In his mind, the most valuable thing was still Omnitel's telecommunications operation license, and he had ulterior motives. He suddenly thought of a Finnish company from Omnitel.
He almost forgot about this Nokia that was on the verge of bankruptcy and later became the world's largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer.
He needed to use Omnitel's shell to acquire Nokia.
With such favorable conditions, Olivetti had no reason to reject. They sold 70% of their shares for 49 million USD.
And Olivetti's chairman, Benaditi, personally served as Omnitel's general manager.
Li He used his wholly-owned company, Latvian Dartz Automotive, to provide Omnitel with a guaranteed loan of 900 million USD. The funds were provided by UBS.
From start to finish, it had nothing to do with China.
With the money, Benaditi personally went to Finland. He was also very interested in Nokia's GSM mobile phone.
He was full of confidence because Guo Dongyun had assured him that as long as he could acquire Nokia, no amount of money would be a problem.
Under Guo Dongyun's arrangement, ARM's founder, Hoser, acquired VLSI. He then signed an intellectual property cross-licensing agreement with Russia's Bedelev chip factory and discussed an OEM agreement.
His confidence was inflated, and his appetite increased. Guo Dongyun arranged for him to go to the US. He did not have any objections. With a large amount of money in his hand, he swung his knife at Yingweida!
He had more confidence in the graphics processor than anyone else!
Li He's current goal was to become number one in the chip and telecommunications business!
He could not guarantee the chip business. After all, there were no major advantages. He only had a lot of money.
But for telecommunications and telecommunications equipment, he was looking forward to it. If Omnitel could acquire Nokia, it would be his trump card. He also had Sun Softbank as his trump card.
If he had the opportunity to meet Ren Huawei in the future, he did not mind handing Omnitel over to Ren Huawei.
Guo Dongyun was busy, but Shen Daoru was not idle either. The reason why he took the initiative to follow Li He this time was that his main purpose was to buy land and buildings. After he had tasted the sweetness of real estate, he was not willing to let it go.
Also, the British pound crisis was a rare opportunity for him to get a bargain.
His first move was through a real estate broker to buy the iconic Lloyd's building in the City of London for 126 million pounds from the UK's largest insurance company. Other than using it to increase the value of the building, it could also be used as the headquarters of the British subsidiary of Yuan Da Group.
Li He smiled and asked, "For such a big insurance company, the annual insurance premium should be 3 to 4 billion USD, right? Why did you sell the headquarters? "
In the world's insurance industry, the most famous, most reputable, had the most funds, the longest history, and the most money was the UK's "Lloyd's" insurance company. How could they rely on a seller to survive?
Shen Daoru smiled and said, "Their family has been unlucky for the past ten years. In 1983, 28 of the airliners they underwrote had accidents, and they lost 300 million. The next year, they underwrote three communications satellites in the US. This time, they were even more unlucky. The satellite launch failed, and all three satellites malfunctioned. The insurance amount was 1.8 billion! All lost! During the Iran-Iraq war, they underwrote the reports for oil tankers entering and leaving the Persian Gulf! This time, it was not easy, and they lost close to 600 million! There was also a computer company in the US whose computers malfunctioned, and they also lost 400 million! "
"Losing money to buy credibility. It's worth it." Li He was a little impressed.
He took a document from Shen Daoru and looked at it seriously out of curiosity.
He was most interested in the unique organizational structure of this insurance company. This company did not belong to an individual, nor was it the usual form of a joint-stock company.
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
