Rebirth of England.

By early September, Barron left America and returned to London.

When he arrived in London, Alstom Group CEO Patrick Boucheron came to London from France specifically to meet with Baron.

The GII Fund has reached an agreement to acquire Alstom. As for the EU, the GII Fund's acquisition of Alstom itself does not involve a merger of the two companies. It is simply an acquisition. Therefore, there are no antitrust issues and the acquisition was quickly approved.

Now Bo Kelong continues to serve as the CEO of Alstom Group. With the injection of funds from the GII fund, he will make certain adjustments to the Alstom Group.

However, when meeting with Barron, the main topic the two discussed was the thorough review of the Alstom Group.

This is also Barron's preventive measure to prevent Alstom from repeating the same mistakes. In the original time and space, the main reason why Alstom was targeted by the United States, in addition to "assisting" General Electric in acquiring the company, was, of course, that Alstom's business posed a threat to related industries in the United States.

Although Alstom has now been acquired by the GII fund, it has avoided the fate of being taken over by General Electric.

However, the threat posed by Alstom to related American industries still exists, so we cannot say that Alstom is safe now. Even Barron’s other industries are bound to be investigated by the CIA before this. He cannot be complacent about Alstom and think that the United States will let this company go.

Of course, it is inevitable in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to obtain some overseas orders through private transactions.

As I said before, this is what multinational companies do. If you don’t, the result will be the loss of some big orders.

But even so, it is necessary to avoid some of Alstom's actions from falling within the scope of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Now that Alstom has been acquired by the GII Fund, it is about to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. However, according to the provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, even if you conduct these activities through American branches, banks and related institutions, you will be subject to the long-arm jurisdiction of the United States.

Therefore, the significance of this review is to first find out whether some of the previous "private transactions" involve companies and institutions that can be "regulated" by the "Foreign Corruption Act" - in the original time and space, Alstom's vice president was detained by the United States. One of them was in 2003, when Alstom's vice president Pierucci bribed Indonesian congressmen and state power company officials through "middlemen" and successfully bid for the power station project in Tarahan area of ​​Sumatra and the Phase 5 project of the Tamsui Estuary Power Station near Jakarta.

At that time, obtaining international market projects through intermediaries was an acceptable and most common way. Many large multinational companies, including Alstom, had adopted similar methods.

But the key point is that this transaction involved an American branch of Alstom, so the Americans found evidence of this and arrested Pierucci under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

Therefore, Alstom’s internal review this time is to screen out such past transactions and take remedial measures.

In addition, it is strictly stipulated that similar transactions of Alstom in the future shall not be conducted in US dollars (the use of US dollars will involve American banks or financial institutions, which is also within the scope of the Anti-Foreign Corruption Act), nor shall it be conducted through any company or institution related to the United States...

A more favorable point for Barron is that through the development of local financial institutions including the United Bank for Africa, its related business will not only be limited to the African region, but will also expand to Asia, Europe and other places. Therefore, this will also provide a safer and secret channel for many of their transactions that is not easily subject to strict supervision by the United States.

This is also a very important role of the regional financial center. For example, in his previous life, Barron knew that if a film and television company, or a company related to a signed internet celebrity, had a close relationship with a company established by Huaxia HK, then there was a very high probability that these companies would be involved in money laundering...

This is an illegal transaction that takes advantage of the convenience of Hong Kong, China's financial center.

It can be said that there is a reason why Alstom has fallen to its current state. In addition to bad luck, its internal management does have some problems.

But at the same time, the reason why Barron went to great lengths to acquire it is that it has corresponding value. In terms of technology, Alstom also has its own technical reserves in the field of power and gas turbines.

Then the next very important task for Bo Kelong is to reorganize Alstom's business and develop it according to the route set by Baron for Alstom.

After all, although he was engaged in the financial industry in his previous life, it also involved some corporate mergers and acquisitions. At that time, a domestic power company in China once hired their department for consulting when it was conducting overseas mergers and acquisitions.

Therefore, although Baron is a complete layman when it comes to the specific technical aspects of these industries, he still knows which areas have development potential in ten years.

And these are what Alstom needs most now.

……

The Frankfurt Motor Show opens on September 9th.

Germany is the world's first place to hold an international auto show. The Frankfurt Auto Show was formerly known as the Berlin Auto Show, which was founded in 1897 and moved to Frankfurt in 1951. It is held annually, with passenger cars and commercial vehicles exhibited in turn.

The Frankfurt Motor Show is the world's largest auto show and is known as the "Auto Olympics".

At this year's Frankfurt Motor Show, a special exhibition hall was set up for the first time to showcase electric vehicles, which means that the organizers will support and deepen the promotion and use of electric vehicles around the world.

Following the launch of the electric supercar Concept One at last year's Shanghai World Expo, the new electric supercar Nevera 11 from Rimac Automobili and Aston Martin also made its debut at this auto show and received great attention.

In addition to the improved performance of Nevera11 compared to ConceptOne, the most important point is that the battery used in Nevera11 is manufactured by the British Automobile Group itself.

At the beginning of this year, British Motor Group acquired a lithium battery manufacturing plant in England from Japan's Automotive Energy Supply Company (AESC), and based on this, established its own battery production center.

AESC is a lithium-ion battery company specially established for electric vehicles by Nissan and NEC in 2007. A lithium manganese oxide battery produced by them was used in Nissan's Nissan Leaf last year. This car later became the world's single pure electric vehicle sales champion.

Their battery production plant in the UK is located in Sunderland in the northeast of England. Based on the research results of the joint R&D center of the British Motor Group and Tesla, they established the British Motor Group's first battery production center after acquiring this battery factory. The lithium batteries produced by them have relatively good performance at present. After being used on the Nevera11 prototype car and after a long period of experiments, the results are still very satisfactory.

After using their own batteries and battery pack technology, the full-charge range of Nevera11 has been greatly improved compared to ConceptOne.

In addition to supplying batteries for Never11, the Sunderland battery production center will also provide batteries for Jaguar's upcoming pure electric sedan.

This will also be the first electric car produced by the British Motor Group and is expected to be sold in the European market starting next year.

This Jaguar model, named TYPE, is a four-door coupe. Its pure electric version will be launched at the end of 2012 with an estimated price of US$9.5 to US$10, slightly higher than the Tesla Model S.