I Become A Noble in England

On September 1, the listed company Summit Media announced that they would issue new shares to acquire other businesses of the SEM Group, including its shares in Digital UK, Independent Newspapers and 30% of Stuart Media.

After completing this acquisition, Summit Media will change its stock name to SEM Group, with the stock code SEMC.

In fact, this means injecting the assets of the entire SEM Group into the listed company Summit Media, thus completing a "backdoor listing."

The rest of SEM Group's assets were valued at £1.5bn – in fact, their 45.9% stake in Digital UK alone was worth nearly £1bn.

This time, Summit Media will issue an additional 45 million shares to complete this asset injection.

Of these 45 million shares, DS Capital received 40.5 million shares and Sinclair Group received 4.5 million shares.

Thus, after completing this injection, DS Capital's shareholding in SEM Group (a listed company) is 130.5 million shares, accounting for 62.14%; Sinclair Group holds 14.5 million shares, accounting for 6.9%.

This time, the additional shares were issued in exchange for the injected SEM Group assets at a price of more than 33 pounds per share. Compared with when they acquired ITV, the share price has risen by more than 10%...

Therefore, there was no objection from other shareholders, including ITV's original shareholders, to this asset injection.

After injecting assets and changing the stock name and code this time, SEM Group's stock price rose again by more than 5% at the opening, which also shows that the market is optimistic about this operation.

Currently, SEM Group's share price is around 34.75 pounds, with a total share capital of approximately 210 million shares and a market value of 7.3 billion pounds, which is similar to the market value of the BBC and Sky TV.

In the current British television media industry, the BBC, Sky TV and SEM Group are truly the three giants.

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In addition, Argent Real Estate Group has also started its IPO roadshow, and this time they will be listed on the main board of the London Stock Exchange.

According to the plan, Argent Real Estate Group will publicly issue 171 million shares, accounting for 15% of the total share capital after issuance.

Currently, they have set the issue price of the stock at 4.5-5.5 pounds. Based on the highest price of 5.5 pounds, Argent Property Group will raise approximately 940 million pounds through this IPO. Based on this calculation, the market value of Argent Property Group will reach 6.27 billion pounds.

Well, you have to know that in their last round of financing, DS Capital invested 150 million pounds and acquired 15% of the shares. At that time, the valuation of Argent Real Estate Group was still 1 billion pounds.

DS Capital and Devonshire Family Trust now hold a total of 31% of the shares before listing, which is about 300 million shares. Based on the issue price of 5.5 pounds, these shares are already worth 1.65 billion pounds.

Because it leads the urban renewal plan in King's Cross, the largest urban renewal plan in London in nearly 150 years, the prospects of Argent Real Estate Group are still very promising.

However, what is interesting is that the issue price of Argent Real Estate Group can be set at this price, and the effect of the roadshow is also very satisfactory. One of the major factors is that DS Capital is also one of the major shareholders of this real estate group.

We have to admit that "believing in successful people" is the most common psychology among people.

DS Capital has also developed successfully over the years and has a strong brand effect. The projects they invest in have also begun to be trusted by investors.

This sense of trust cannot be established overnight. It was only after repeated success and almost no failed investments that it was finally accepted by people and formed a consensus.

Just like on Wall Street, there are countless geniuses who shine like comets, but the ones that can really make those big institutions feel at ease to invest huge amounts of money are the long-standing old players such as Berkshire Hathaway, Blackstone, and Vanguard.

DS Capital has also begun to move towards the ranks of such "old players".

For example, the second phase of the Global Industrial Investment Fund launched by Barron's this time received a warm response after the relevant policies of the fund were sent to the world's well-known sovereign funds and public funds. Even though the annualized fixed income products used in this second phase of the fund have a yield of 8-10%, which is lower than previous products such as the Caesar Fund and Athena Fund (at this time, the annualized yields of these fund products are already on par with the GII Phase II Fund), it has not affected the enthusiasm of these investors at all.

Before the Mars Fund opened its investment window this year, after extracting $1.2 billion in investment income, DS Capital invested the $1.2 billion as its own capital into the GII Phase II Fund.

The investors who came to London to participate in the GII Phase II fund this time include not only the "Middle Eastern tycoons" such as the Qatar Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, but also public investment funds from the Western camp such as the British local pension public investment fund, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and the Japanese Government Pension Fund.

Compared with the total fund size of US$6 billion of the first phase of the GII fund, the second phase fund has reached a record-breaking scale of US$12 billion.

This level of fundraising and speed was unimaginable more than two years ago when DS Capital just established the Mars Fund.

It is often the case that when the scale of such a fund is larger, it can give people a sense of trust, allowing investors to wave their money and join in with more confidence...

In fact, this is the result of the GII Fund intentionally limiting the fundraising scale to US$12 billion after rejecting many investors whose sources are not so "clear" - after all, they don't want to cause trouble. They don't want to get involved with funds from military governments in more chaotic areas or "investment companies" in Eastern Europe and South America that are suspected of being involved with criminal groups.

Often those groups are more generous and magnanimous in their actions, but given Barron's current position, there is no need for him to engage in such "money laundering" activities. Even if he can pretend to be ignorant, the relevant international organizations will certainly keep an eye on his GII Fund.

After the establishment of the second phase of the GII Fund, GII Fund's CEO Finn Hudson came to London and met with Barron.

After an afternoon of conversation, Finn Hudson let out a sigh of relief and said to Barron:

"This is a difficult task, Your Highness."

"But I believe that if it can be done, it will change the landscape of the industry."

Hearing Barron's confident words, Finn Hudson's face was solemn:

"I hope so. I will try my best to accomplish it."

After this conversation, Finn Hudson took a flight from London to the Netherlands without waiting for the funds for GII Phase II to be fully received.