Chapter 205： dead friends don't die

After attending Musk's wedding, William Chen accompanied Fan Bingbing for two days in Scotland.

In the meantime, they discussed the object that Fan Bingbing Studio would invest in next.

Huace Film and Television, founded by Zhao Yifang in October 2005, is headquartered in Hangzhou. This company is still very ambitious. When it was just founded and the volume was not large, it dared to invest 50 million yuan and strive for excellence in filming. A TV series - "Once Upon a Time in China".

When William Chen saw the information collected about the current film and television company in Huaguo, he noticed this very familiar name. The reason for this was because he remembered that this company seemed to be called the number one TV drama in Huaguo later on. Shares, and the name is very familiar later, it should develop very well.

From the information, it can be seen that Huace Film and Television has conducted A round of financing last year. Zheshang Venture Capital invested 34 million Chinese coins, holding 10% of the shares of Huace Film and Television, and Liuhe Capital invested 17 million yuan and held 5% of the company. % of the shares.

In this way, the post-investment valuation of Huace Film and Television at that time was 340 million Chinese dollars. Whether it is the current size of the company or its future development, it is a good investment target.

Therefore, William Chen negotiated with Fan Bingbing. After she returned to China, she cooperated with Li Ying to go to Zhao Yifang of Huace Film and Television to talk about buying the shares of previous investors, or investing in shares, to occupy this company. At least 30% of the shares are guaranteed to have a certain right to speak in the company.

I believe that with Fan Bingbing's fame at this time, and more importantly, the resources Chen William possesses, it is not difficult for such a small company to agree to financing.

After Fan Bingbing left the UK for France, William Chen also returned to the United States because an unexpected thing happened.

He didn't go back to New York directly, but went to Washington first.

It was already seven o'clock in the evening when William Chen arrived at the house of Uncle John Del Rey near Capitol Hill.

After entering the living room, seeing that John Del Rey was still in a suit and leather shoes, he couldn't help asking in surprise:

"Are you going to go out later? Uncle."

John Del Rey sighed and said, "I also just came back from Capitol Hill. There are too many things to discuss recently."

While speaking, John Drey took William Chen to the study, and after closing the door, he suddenly said:

"Recently, there has been a lot of pressure on the commander-in-chief, and the party is very active, constantly criticizing our response to the crisis, especially the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, which have accepted several hearings."

It seems that John Drey has accumulated a lot of complaints recently, and he couldn't help but say: "No matter what they do now, they are against it. The subprime mortgage crisis was already difficult enough to deal with, and it has to be restrained by the party. money to bail out those banks and corporations that they say is the culprit of abusing state tax revenue to bail out the crisis; well now, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, they turned their heads and blamed the government bailout, didn't help Lehman Brothers, and watched let them fall..."

Yes, just this morning, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy.

Once the news was announced, the stock market, which had slowly recovered before, was hit hard again. The three major U.S. stock indexes plummeted across the board that day, generally falling by more than 5%. Affected by this, after the plane landed just now, he received news that Europe And Asian stock markets are all in the red after the opening bell.

Under John Drey's narration, William Chen heard the inside story.

On February 26, last Friday, there was a meeting in the New York Fed conference room on how to save Lehman Brothers.

The convener of the meeting was the chairman of the New York Fed. In addition to the US Treasury Secretary and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, there were also representatives of major banks, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Bank of New York Mellon. , Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

It can be said that the New York Federal Reserve President Gates has brought in all the consortiums that can almost save the ****.

After he introduced the current situation of Lehman Brothers, he hopes to find a way to save Lehman Brothers this weekend through everyone's discussion.

However, after his speech, US Treasury Secretary Paulson immediately set the tone for the meeting:

"Don't expect the government to take action, the protagonists of solving the problem are you!"

He said bluntly: "If Lehman doesn't exist, our life will be even more difficult, you should take action."

After Paulson's words fell, New York Fed President Gaithner also issued the same statement:

“In the process of solving Lehman Brothers, the Fed will not provide special credit support, if you can’t find a suitable solution, then when the market opens next Monday, panic will spread and a local problem will become A catastrophe and the entire financial system is at risk.”

In the previous process of Morgan Stanley's acquisition of Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve provided $30 billion in credit support, and when it rescued Citibank, it also injected a total of $45 billion into it twice, thus making the government a Citibank's largest shareholder.

The reason why the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve are so tough now is that the government will not give a penny to bail out Lehman Brothers. In addition to being slammed by members of Congress and the public in the previous bailout, there is also a The behavior of not actively saving themselves and only waiting for government funding is very angry, I hope this time I can beat them well.

But the consortium representatives in the meeting were not stupid. Although they were surprised by the tough attitude of the government this time, they would not fail to see the other party's purpose. Therefore, at the beginning of this meeting, they had been caught in this kind of silence and game. middle.

After all, although the consortiums present here, except Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, are in better conditions, the subprime mortgage crisis is only the second stage, and I don’t know how long it will last in the future, just like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, although After that, they made some money, but in the short-selling harvest in Europe and Asia, this kind of operation was already in a fuzzy area, and they did not dare to take too much money to take risks. funds.

Moreover, the destructiveness of this crisis is systemic, not something they can make up for by temporarily earning billions of dollars. It can be said that after the liquidity shortage of the entire economy and society, all their businesses have almost come to a standstill, and the loss of It is also immeasurable.

If it wasn't for William Chen handing over a lot of business to Goldman Sachs this time, I'm afraid they would be even worse off. But don't forget, at the same time, the price of acquiring these businesses is that they have at least provided more than 10 billion US dollars to support these acquisitions by William Chen, which has also caused a shortage of funds, and it is even more impossible to help Lehman Brothers at this time.

You must know that Lehman Brothers is no bigger than Bear Stearns, his scale is much larger than Bear Stearns. Even buying Bear Stearns would have to rely on the Fed to provide $30 billion in funding to keep it from collapsing, showing how difficult it would be to bail them out at a time like this.

Yes, if you can swallow Lehman Brothers, you may make yourself the largest investment bank, but it is more likely that you will be pulled into the abyss by this behemoth that has fallen into the quagmire.

Therefore, all the consortiums present here will not take the initiative to rely on themselves to rescue Lehman Brothers. The game continues like this. They need to be assured of financial support by the government before they can do it with confidence.

During this meeting, another thing happened, that is, American Bank, which was quite interested in acquiring Lehman Brothers at that time, did not attend the meeting. At that time, they were negotiating the acquisition with Lehman Brothers.

When their negotiation was almost finalized and the lawyers were preparing to draft the acquisition agreement, a representative of American Bank went out to answer a phone call. After returning, he said to the representative of Lehman Brothers: Regrettably, the board of directors asked them to Suspend negotiations.

The reason for such a dramatic change lies in Merrill Lynch. When the representative of Merrill Lynch attended the meeting on the 26th, on the first day, from the attitudes of the US Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chairman, he found that the government would not provide funds to help them this time.

So in this case, American Bank has become the most likely buyer, the key is that they are in contact with Lehman Brothers!

The representative of Merrill Lynch urgently contacted the board of directors and disclosed the situation of the meeting and his analysis. As a result, Merrill Lynch showed a strong desire to survive. They decisively intercepted the Bank of America and contacted the other party urgently to " The method of "fire sale" gave Bank of America an "unable to refuse" condition.

As a result, Lehman Brothers, who was still arguing, was decisively abandoned by Bank of America, and thus reached an acquisition agreement with Bank of Merrill Lynch at the shortest speed, and Bank of Merrill Lynch kept itself.