The Industrial Giant Reborn

"Acquire a European supermarket brand?" Not only Wu Weibing, but also Zhou Jiayang was surprised. This was too big a deal. They had already planned to acquire cars and banks before, and now they have added supermarkets.

However, considering that the scale of our group is large enough to rival several Fortune 500 companies, acquisition is indeed a good way to quickly enter the new market of Europe when the development of Asia and the Americas encounters bottlenecks.

"Forget about the ones in Europe, let's choose one in the UK. It will be easier for us to manage in the future, and we can use the UK as a springboard to enter the European market." Chen Zhiwen thought for a while and then said.

Retail business, cross-state operations, has basically proven to be very difficult for later international retail giants. A supermarket can grow into a giant within its own resources at most. Supermarkets in the United States, Europe, and Asia are all in this way.

Today, I have Costco in the United States, and Watsons' PARKnSHOP and RT-Mart in Asia. When the mainland liberalizes the foreign retail industry in a few years, I can also capture this huge market. In Europe, Watsons' It is too difficult to bring two brands over and start operations from scratch. To compete with local brands, the cost will need to be doubled.

It would be better to directly acquire a local brand, use Galaxy Trading's strong supply chain procurement capabilities and its own capital to support the brand's expansion in Europe. This would be more convenient and have a higher probability of success.

"British? In the past half month, I went to a lot of British supermarkets. I feel that the British local supermarket Tesco is very good, but this is also my personal feeling. I will check the information of all British supermarkets." Wu Weibing was a little happy said.

The acquisition of a local British supermarket company will definitely be a big development for Watsons, and may even enter an important node in the company's development history in the future. As a professional manager, who doesn't want the scale of his own company to become larger and larger? ? As for the funds for acquisitions, Watsons is actually developing very well in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. As long as it does not choose a very large chain brand, Watsons itself has the ability to complete mergers and acquisitions. After all, under normal circumstances, it would acquire a company worth 1 billion. , as long as your credit is good enough, you can get a loan of 700 million from the other company alone. As long as you make good use of financial leverage, the cost of acquisition is not high. The biggest problem is to stabilize subsequent operations, then there will be no problem.

"Tesco? Not bad, I know this supermarket." Chen Zhiwen nodded. This will be the largest supermarket in the UK in the future, and it will also be ranked among the top in the world. However, it does not have such a scale at present. If it can be acquired, it will be great. I just don’t know how much impact my interference will have on this supermarket.

"Okay, Chen Sheng, I will report to you and Zhou Sheng after I complete the market research information." Wu Weibing said.

"Well, now is a period of expansion for our group. If you have any ideas, you can put forward and investigate. If appropriate, I will not disagree." Chen Zhiwen smiled again and said.

With the size of the entire group now, it is unlikely that Chen Zhiwen will find ways to use his prophetic golden fingers to benefit the company. At most, he will take charge of those super opportunities, such as games and software that will have unparalleled profits in the future. Or major international events such as the oil crisis or Japan's Plaza Accord, or simply large-scale investments. For other things, the professional managers and teams under them can be responsible for themselves. When a company develops to a certain scale, it will inevitably find ways to break through on its own. This is something that any large company will encounter. As the boss, Chen Zhiwen only needs to control the direction.

In the next few days, several of my subordinates began to operate their own affairs according to their own purposes. It has been half a month since they came to the UK, and most of the time they have been playing together. Now it is almost time to get down to business. Even Midea's Lei Shengli and Red Bull's Qin Zhihao were invited by British officials to discuss the establishment of a research and development branch and a new beverage factory in the UK.

The former has a low investment and is profitable. There are also many IT talents in Europe. Letting these talents provide more playable games for Midea's game consoles is a win-win situation. The investment in the latter is not small. Mainly for the entire European market, the transportation cost of beverages is high, and it is impossible to always produce it in Asia and then ship it to Europe and the United States. However, it is difficult to say whether it will be built in the UK or not.

Including automobiles, supermarkets and some financial investments, Chen Zhiwen will definitely spend hundreds of millions of pounds in investment this time in the UK. This makes the British government very satisfied. Thatcher also specially arranged for the delivery of a Rolls-Royce , to facilitate Chen Zhiwen's travel in the UK. The license plate on it is said to be marked within the British Traffic Police. As long as he does not do anything excessive, he basically turns a blind eye.

However, since it involves a large amount of investment, it is naturally impossible to decide so quickly. Even the simplest acquisition of Sunseeker Yachts only requires tens of millions of pounds, but it will take several months no matter how fast it is.

Not to mention Chen Zhiwen, even Zhou Jiayang, Tian Xuecheng and others would not be able to stay in the UK forever. After arranging a professional team and deciding on the investment direction, Chen Zhiwen left the UK with a few people, but not back to Hong Kong, but to Italy. , because there is another acquisition target that he is very interested in.

But not any local Italian industry, but the AC Milan football team.

Italy: Milan:

This country is quite magical. It is not an exaggeration to describe its performance in World War I and World War II as "wonderful". But in terms of football, he is very strong. Chen Zhiwen also likes football, but whether now or in future generations, he is just watching, not too involved.

Because you have enough interest, you need to bring yourself into it, such as watching martial arts TV, online novels, etc., usually you will bring yourself into the protagonist, but in football, the good players in these games are European and American white people, he can lead If you can't get in, it's not as good as basketball. At least there are still a few Chinese.

Unless you really like a certain football star, you might be able to bring him in regardless of your race, but Chen Zhiwen can't do that yet.

In terms of basketball, after acquiring the Los Angeles Lakers, Chen Zhiwen has asked Michael, the head coach there, to select suitable Chinese people. Don’t worry about the small signing and training costs. Find more, and then focus on training and slowly develop them, even if they are on the bench in the early stage. It doesn’t matter if you are a substitute. As time goes by, you can always find one or two suitable ones. If that doesn’t work, if there are such Chinese players in other basketball teams, you can buy them. This will not only meet the requirements of the Chinese community for a sense of inclusion, but also meet his future needs. Demand for commercial advertising in the mainland market.

But when it comes to football, there seems to be no choice. In this case, we can only focus on Europe and other markets outside the United States.

As early as more than two years ago, Chen Zhiwen asked Red Bull to try to make tentative contacts with those first-division teams in Europe. However, teams are different from companies. As long as the price is in place, the latter will not consider it at all. Even Google and Facebook were almost sold to Yahoo.

But when it comes to football teams, those who can buy them are basically super rich, and most of them like football. And they don’t expect football to make money. As long as it’s not too loss-making, they basically won’t sell it, unless they There is a problem in the main industry, and it would be the same for Chen Zhiwen. The Lakers have already obtained it, so no matter how high the price offered by others, they will basically not be considered.

Therefore, it took more than two years for Red Bull's commercial advertising department in Europe to communicate with a number of first-division teams, and AC Milan finally became the breakthrough point.

This team is very well-known, and it will be the same in later generations. Chen Zhiwen is very happy, otherwise, if it was just another ordinary team, he might not come.

"The scenery in Italy is really good. We don't even see commercial buildings or thermal power plants." Sitting in the car, Chen Zhiwen said while looking at the scenery outside.

Although you can fly directly to Milan, since you arrived in Italy, you still need to walk around, so I took a car and went to several nearby places to check out. The advantage of a small country is that you can drive to anywhere in one day.

"Sheng Chen, there are basically no high-rise buildings here in Italy, and there are no power stations either. They are all outsourced to Germany." Xiang Tianyou, the person in charge of Red Bull in Europe, said.

"Outsource all? The lifeblood is in the hands of others? That's awesome." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, outsourcing all the lifeblood of his country is also a talent. Fortunately, the emergence of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles has made the world unable to fight three wars, otherwise This kind of country will be finished immediately.

"Maybe for Italy, it doesn't matter whether there is a lifeline or not. Anyway, they will follow whoever is stronger." Xiang Tianyou said with a smile.

"Yes." Chen Zhiwen did not continue the topic and asked: "Hasn't the transaction price at AC Milan been determined yet?"

"The current price quoted by the Edouard family behind AC Milan is 130 million US dollars. We asked professionals to evaluate it and it was 110 million US dollars. Now the two sides are arguing. They think the history of AC Milan is more valuable, and we are seizing the opportunity of AC Milan in recent years. Making a fuss over various mistakes, at present, it is still a bit of a stalemate." Xiang Tianyou said.

"Well, are there any other competitors?" Chen Zhiwen asked.

He also knew something about AC Milan. In 1980, AC Milan was involved in gambling fraud and was relegated and punished. In 1982, its results were very poor. This led to even the Italians not being optimistic about AC Milan, and even felt that they had lost football. As well as people in Italy, many players also changed jobs and left after the contract period. At this time, it can be said that this is AC Milan's darkest moment.

This is why the Edward family, the boss behind him, expressed their intention to consider selling after contacting Red Bull. Otherwise, there would be no such opportunity under normal circumstances.

A team like this may not be sold for many years.