America's Road to Fame

Chapter 29 Gared's Plan
"William, I think we should have a good talk. You should know that our Kushner Group has completed the acquisition of the remaining 666% of the shares in Building 40. So now we are partners, and the current rental business of the building is not ideal, so For the common good, we need to cooperate."

After completing a pleasant study, Chen William had just sent Erica away when he received a call from Garrett. He hoped to make an appointment with him to have a good talk.

William Chen wanted to see what Garrett had in mind, so he told the other party that he still had arrangements later, and if he needed to talk, he could give Garrett half an hour.In this matter, Chen Weilian did not perfunctory the other party, he did have something to wait for a while.

Tom made an appointment with William Chen for an interview on "The Oprah Show" a few days ago. In this episode of the program, Oprah will bring her team to New York to have a talk with William Chen. The time is about It's scheduled for later this afternoon.

Garrett readily agreed. He was in Building 666 right now, so he came to William Chen's office very quickly.

After the two greeted each other, they sat down opposite William Chen. Jared said, "William, this is already a fact. Our Kushner Group has completed the acquisition of 666% of the shares in Building 40. Therefore, I now formally propose to you to acquire you An offer for 60% of the shares in hand. Our Kushner Group will still make the acquisition at the overall valuation of the building at US$20 billion. After completing this acquisition, you can immediately get US$12 billion in cash.”

"Sorry, Garrett, I have already answered you once about this matter. Even now, my answer has not changed in any way - Building 666 is not for sale. But I welcome you to join us, we can cooperate."

It's not that William Chen is not impressed by Garrett's offer. If he sells 60% of Building 666 in his hand, he will have 12 billion US dollars in cash immediately, and after repaying the bank loan, there will be nearly half of it left. .With this money, no matter what he invests, the returns he receives will be much higher than continuing to hold shares in Building 666.

Especially when the subprime mortgage crisis is about to break out. Once the subprime mortgage crisis breaks out, the real estate market in the United States will collapse. At that time, the price of buildings will also drop a lot.If he sells 60% of his shares now.Then maybe after one or two years, when the housing price drops to the lowest point, the building can be bought back for only two-thirds or even half of the price, and you can earn hundreds of millions of dollars in price difference, isn’t it good? ?

But one issue that needs to be considered is that all acquisitions are not easy. Even if you can spend enough money, whether the other party is willing to sell is another issue.Just like Garret now, he can use his abundant capital to make an acquisition, but as long as William Chen insists not to sell, he has no choice.

Therefore, when acquiring assets, some starting points are often needed.Either it is a good time for the right time, place, and people, or you already hold shares with sufficient influence in your hands. Those acquisitions that are forced to push without these factors often take more effort, and even The end result is that the acquisition fails.

And as the Kushner Group, which has been in the real estate industry for so many years, doesn't it know that as long as it survives the economic crisis for a few years, the real estate industry will recover sooner or later?
If they insist on doing this, William Chen does not have any shares in the building as a hand to intervene, then maybe he will never be able to get the building back, unless he offers a very attractive price, then at least they will have to accept it. The purchase price at that time was higher.

William Chen needs to take into account that after all, Garrett's family company, the Kushner Group, controls billions of dollars in assets.

Even if he asks the other party to add a repurchase priority clause in the contract similar to the one he had with the Andal Trust Fund before, as long as his family decides to keep the project and refuse to sell it during the crisis and the real estate downturn, he will not have any Method.And after the crisis passed, the price of real estate rose again, and he couldn't find a bargain at all.

Just like in William Chen's previous life, although Garrett bought Building No. 666, he had brought him great fame.But at that time, the timing of his acquisition was also not good. After buying Building No. 666, he encountered the subprime mortgage crisis.

He survived the crisis by selling 49.9% of the shares in the building, and did not sell the building.It can also be seen that even in such difficult times, they still will not give up their holding qualifications to the building, and try to buy back those shares after the crisis. It is not so easy to return more than 50% of the controlling stake.

By analogy, Chen William also has a plan to take advantage of the opportunity to buy other assets in the upcoming subprime mortgage crisis.Therefore, in the plan, he also needs to try his best to penetrate into the interior of those target companies before this, and hold a part of the shares in his hands first, as a starting point.We can see this situation in many acquisitions in reality. Many acquisitions are not completed at one time. Instead, they first become one of the shareholders by purchasing shares, and then gradually increase the shares they hold, and finally complete the acquisition. .

At the same time, although the shares in Building 666 he currently holds belong to his own assets, when dealing with these assets, he cannot ignore the feelings of Tom and the Drey family.After all, he is not the prodigal son of his predecessor, and he is grateful to Tom and John Drey for their care and help.He knew that in Tom's heart, the most important thing was the assets left to him by his parents, including his real estate, and in addition, Building 666.

When the predecessor sold the shares in the building, the situation was also helpless at that time, after all, there was such a large loan that needed to be repaid.

But now Tom and the others clearly know that they have relatively sufficient funds. If they still sell the shares in the building, it will hurt their feelings too much.After all, William Chen couldn't explain to them that the subprime mortgage crisis was about to break out, and he couldn't guarantee that the building would be 100% bought back by that time.

Therefore, compared with disappointing and saddening the people around him from the difference of hundreds of millions of dollars he might earn, William Chen finally gave up the slightly risky choice.

For William Chen's refusal, Garrett had already expected it.He also doesn't put all his hopes on this acquisition offer.After William Chen replied, Garrett said:
"William, I hope you will think about it again. My acquisition request will be valid for a long time. Besides, as one of the major shareholders of Building 666, I have another proposal to propose. That is I hope to do a complete reconstruction of Building 666. We have done an assessment that if the building is raised and renovated to a height of 1400 feet, the cost will be about 30 billion US dollars. I have heard of similar plans, once It's what your father wanted to do when he was alive."

"Garred, your investigation is very clear. Indeed, after my father bought this building, he had a similar renovation plan before, but it was shelved due to an accident. I am more interested in your proposal now. The question is, what method do you want to carry out? I don’t believe that you will be so kind as to lend such a sum of money to the building for renovation.”

Hearing Garrett's proposal, William Chen realized that the meat show was coming, and this should be his biggest purpose for coming here today.

"Our current plan is that the Kushner Group will invest 30 billion US dollars to promote the renovation plan of Building 666 in the form of capital contribution." Sure enough, Garrett revealed the key point of this plan.

"Good means, if according to your plan, Kushner Group will become the largest shareholder of Building 30 after investing 666 billion U.S. dollars in shares. Your next step will not be to change the name of this building to Kushner Building."

William Chen said with a half-smile.According to Garrett’s plan, based on the current overall valuation of No. 666 Building at 20 billion US dollars, after investing 30 billion US dollars, the shares held by the Kushner Group will increase from 40% to 76%, thus fully controlling the building. .William Chen's stake in the building will be reduced from 60% to 24%. Although he still has a certain right to speak, he has become a minority shareholder.

"I really don't want you to always look at our Kushner Group with such malice, William. To be frank, part of the purpose of this plan is to allow the Kushner Group to have a controlling stake in the building, but in the final analysis, this plan can be implemented, yes There are benefits for both of us.

I hope we can get rid of our prejudices and have a good cooperation. William, you have to know that $30 billion is not a small amount of money. Even our Kushner Group can hardly make up our minds to make such a big gamble.

Therefore, the completion of the holding is also to persuade the other shareholders of the group, so that the interests of the Kushner Group are deeply bound to the No. 666 Building.Although the Kushner Group is controlled by our family, we are not saying that we can decide anything. The opinions of other shareholders also need to be respected. "

"And don't just see that your shares have decreased, William. In fact, after our capital injection, the wealth you hold has not changed, it's just a little less fame. But you can't deny that our Kushner Group is, after all, in I have been immersed in the real estate industry for many years and have more experience in the real estate industry. Therefore, we entrust the operation of Building 666 to us. It will never happen that the vacancy rate of the building is extremely high during the current real estate boom.

And after the renovation of the building, through our operation, the value of the stocks in your hands will definitely be much higher than before. Not to mention the current 12 billion US dollars, it is very possible to increase the value to 20 billion US dollars.We are very sincere and hope that you can give this plan a serious consideration. "

I have to say what Garrett said, it does sound reasonable.However, he just missed two points. The first is that even the Kushner Group cannot say that it has 30 billion US dollars of funds at once, so it is easy to guess that these funds are definitely mainly derived from their loans from banks. , and maybe even their own shares in Building 666 and future shares will be collateral.

What the bank likes to do most is to add icing on the cake. It never gives timely help, but only makes things worse.Therefore, now that the Kushner Group is developing very well, it can get more support from the bank. If it is William Chen, it is absolutely impossible to receive such treatment.

(End of this chapter)