America's Road to Fame

Chapter 257 The Negotiation Between You and Me

In the end, William Chen decided to purchase 25 million preferred shares of Netflix at a price of 800 US dollars and spent a total of 2 million US dollars to support their content production plan.

actually.Hastings prefers to raise funds through financing, but under the current market conditions, Netflix's valuation will not satisfy him, so if he can raise funds through the issuance of preferred shares, it is the best time in a good way.

But for this financing, William Chen did not just support Netflix unconditionally, and stipulated two terms in the signed agreement to purchase preferred shares:
One is that when the next financing is carried out, William Chen has the right to convert the preferred shares he currently holds into common shares.If William Chen’s current preferred shares are converted into common shares, then his shareholding ratio in Netflix will become 44.22%, nearly half of the shares.

The second is that William Chen should have the priority for the next Netflix financing, which means that when Netflix next raises financing, at the same price, William Chen can give priority to investing in additional shares.

Through these conditions, William Chen also ensured that he has the largest shareholding ratio in Netflix, preventing Hastings from diluting his shares by introducing major shareholders when he can't think about it.

After all, William Chen had reached an agreement with Hastings in the previous investment behavior. The voting rights of the shares held by him shall not be used in the opinions put forward by the other party in the scope of operating the company, and only the right of veto is reserved.Both rights of assent and abstention.

Under this premise, unless it is absolutely necessary, Hastings will not easily limit William Chen's interests in the company by diluting his shares, otherwise this behavior will definitely be criticized by many investors.

But nothing is absolute, so certain measures should be taken, and avoidance is also very necessary.

In addition to Netflix, another thing William Chen is currently facing is the acquisition of PayPal.

After Nielsen started to contact eBay with his team and proposed the acquisition of PayPal, eBay has always been ambiguous. It did not expressly reject it, nor did it agree to it. It only delayed because the board of directors needed to consider it.

The situation of eBay is not so good now. After the subprime mortgage crisis affected various industries, eBay's turnover has been declining.

Not long ago, eBay announced a global layoff of 10% in response to the crisis.

Therefore, they analyzed that eBay is not indifferent to selling PayPal, but they can also see the development of PayPal, so they will be entangled.

Now, after a period of deliberation, eBay has finally responded to Meta Group by agreeing to begin negotiations for its acquisition of PayPal.

Initially, eBay's bidding price was $150 billion to sell PayPal, which was ruthlessly rejected by the Meta Group.

Are you kidding me? Now that the market value of eBay is only about 235 billion US dollars, you dare to offer PayPal 150 billion US dollars?Then I might as well just buy the entire eBay, but the extra cost is less than $90 billion.

Of course, that being said, if you want Chen William to really buy eBay, he will definitely not want it. Even though eBay has been brilliant in the past, he has to admit that eBay is really lagging behind, not only being surpassed by the latecomer Amazon, but also The distance between the two is visible to the naked eye.

William Chen has no interest in this kind of company that is destined to have no future.

But even knowing that PayPal has great potential in the future, it is completely impossible for him to acquire it at a price of 150 billion.I'm afraid eBay themselves don't believe they can sell PayPal at this price. They just want to try to see if they can achieve 100 times the return on investment.

After all, when they acquired PayPal, they only spent 15 billion U.S. dollars, and they hadn't paid cash yet, it was all stock.

Therefore, they directly persuaded the other party to dispel this unrealistic fantasy. Meta Group's asking price was 60 billion US dollars, a cash acquisition. 4 times the return on investment, you can be satisfied now, you know, it is an economic crisis now.

So it became eBay, and they said that at this price, there is no need to continue to negotiate, and eBay will not want to waste time on such insincere bids.

Ugh, isn't it time for you to mention an unrealistically high price first?

It's just that these statements are just statements, and the discussion still needs to continue.

William Chen will not bother to talk to eBay either. Just as they are coming and going, Meta Technology has completed two acquisitions, acquiring Zong, a mobile payment provider, for US$1.5 million.

Zong currently cooperates with more than 200 mobile network operators around the world, providing local payment services in 40 languages ​​in more than 21 countries.

Then they acquired the recently launched P2000P payment software Venmo for US$2 million. This is a mobile phone software for small-amount transfers between individuals, but it does not support large-amount transfers. This software emphasizes social attributes, so it does not provide business-to-business Business or business-to-person business.

The acquisition of these two companies can be said to put pressure on eBay. You can not actively sell PayPal to me, but I can make my own payment through the acquisition. At that time, PayPal will also be ready to face competition.

William Chen felt that this alone was not enough, so news of Meta Group's intention to acquire Square began to be reported.If Zong and Venmo are small companies for PayPal, Square is a bigger threat.

Sure enough, eBay began to get nervous, and the negotiations with Meta Group on PayPal also entered a substantive stage.

The content of the current negotiation, in addition to a price acceptable to both parties, is the follow-up cooperation between eBay and PayPal after Meta Group's acquisition of PayPal.

At present, there is an agreement between eBay and PayPal. When shopping on eBay, you can only choose PayPal as the payment method. This is one of the main reasons for the rapid development of PayPal after the acquisition of eBay.

But if eBay sells PayPal, then they don't need to recommend PayPal only as a payment method.After all, not all eBay shoppers have signed up for PayPal. Even if all eBay users have signed up for PayPal because of the uniqueness before, many of their new and old users will have more accustomed payment methods.

Therefore, if it is only for the sake of improving user experience, it is definitely beneficial to eBay to open more payment methods-since PayPal no longer belongs to them, there is no need to give such good conditions to the other party.

eBay proposed that if they continue to maintain the current payment method, then eBay needs to retain at least a certain share of PayPal, and they will not consider making changes to the existing payment situation if they do not sell the company completely and have interests bound.

But William Chen knew about eBay's future development, and that was it. He certainly didn't want to leave shares in eBay. Therefore, this aspect was also one of the focuses of the negotiations.

William Chen no longer participated in the specific negotiations. He just drew a line for the acquisition of PayPal, which is no more than 100 billion US dollars.

He is currently negotiating a lot of projects, but the account of Meta Investment Company is only about 88 billion U.S. dollars, and it is currently burdened with more than 100 billion U.S. dollars in financing from Goldman Sachs. Provide more funds for self-financing. It can be said that even if the Federal Reserve releases water, it will still take a certain amount of time for the American financial system to restore part of its hematopoietic capacity.

Therefore, William Chen will not have more funds to provide for the acquisition of PayPal in the future, and has already begun to consider closing his bullish contract on gold futures that has invested 20 billion US dollars.

At present, the international gold price has risen to more than 1500 US dollars per ounce. Martin Stephenson couldn't help asking him when he was going to close the remaining gold futures after completing the closing of the gold futures of the Kettering Fund.

After all, 10 times leverage is still very disturbing. A 1% rise or fall is equivalent to a 10% profit or loss.

"You have made a big move recently, William. I heard that you have been talking with eBay about the acquisition of PayPal for a long time?"

Bill Gates asked William Chen to play golf together today. His Gates Foundation also invested 5 million US dollars in William Chen's Tianshu Fund. The two met quite a lot recently.

After he hit the ball with his swing, he looked into the distance and said to Chen Weiliang.

"Mr. Gates, why do I always feel that you are watching my every move?" William shook his head and said.

"Haha, I can only blame you for making such big news every time." Bill Gates walked forward with William Chen and said, "I focus on emerging companies that can disrupt the technology industry. It can only be said that your Meta technology is indeed full of potential."

(End of this chapter)