Unlike the usual leveraged buyouts in the 80s, Cersei Capital bought LTD, not intending to split and sell it in a short period of time to cash out quickly, but rather to conduct a secondary listing after long-term operation.

Therefore, it is not possible for Cersei Capital to adopt the short-term high-interest rate lending and junk bond financing models that were common in the 80s.

In order to obtain the necessary funds for the acquisition of LTD, Cersei Capital was already preparing to issue a fund dedicated to the acquisition before the official acquisition began.

After the transaction was officially closed, Cersei Capital also basically completed the fundraising of this fund.

The $2 billion acquisition is nowhere near the $33 billion Reynolds Nabiske takeover, but it is the largest private equity acquisition in two years as the United States has yet to fully emerge from the aftermath of the bond market crash a few years ago.

In order to give investors confidence, and also for the Westeros system itself investment considerations, Westeros announced soon after the deal was concluded that it would buy 10% of the shares of LTD at the agreed price, minus the other 10% of the shares held by the Dexner family, Cersei Capital actually bought only 80% of the shares of LTD company, and the size of the capital to be paid was $1.96 billion.

The addition of Westeros enabled investors who had previously only signed an intent to subscribe to the agreement to quickly fulfill their share of the fund, thus ensuring the successful completion of the acquisition.

The acquisition process took two months to complete, but Simon quickly got in touch with Leslie Wexner, the founder of LTD.

Leslie Wexner's family history is typical of the industry.

What started as a fashion store and grew in size over the next 20 years led to the current LTD company.

Among them, Simon's Victoria's Secret is actually the underwear chain brand that Leslie Wexnay bought from another businessman in 1982.

Because it is not the foundation of the start, although Victoria's Secret has developed very rapidly in recent years, and later when it comes to LTD, everyone will only think of Victoria's Secret, but in fact, Leslie Wexney still takes LTD's women's fashion, sports fashion and other sub-brands as the core of its business at this time.

Therefore, compared with the proportion of more than 60% of the sales of the parent company with a Victoria's Secret brand later, Victoria's Secret at this time only accounted for more than 20% of the sales share of LTD in 1991.

The economic downturn, overexpansion, abandonment of the original 'Limited Brands' business strategy, and unrestrained pursuit of more areas ultimately caused LTD to run into troubles after the collapse of the US bond market.

Speaking of which, the founder of LTD, Leslie Wexnay, is a very radical businessman, which is actually very similar to the impression Simon gives to the outside world.

The Westeros system has risen miraculously in just six years, and Simon's risky moves in the process cannot even be described as simply radical.

However, Simon, who is a two-life man, has always been very clear about what he is doing.

Many of Westeros' layouts that seem unreasonable to outsiders, such as the crazy investment in Egrete in the past two years, are just a preemption of some opportunities that are destined to explode in advance for Simon.

Leslie Wexney clearly doesn't have Simon's 'advantage', and LTD's continued expansion over the past two decades is more of a natural move by an adventurous businessman.

The fashion sector has long been a very competitive Red Sea market.

The continuous expansion of LTD has inevitably fallen into the homogenization problem that many fashion companies cannot avoid: it is difficult for the fashion industry to play too many tricks after all.

The homogenization of clothing products is serious, the scale of enterprises is too bloated, and the relative cost increases, which inevitably leads to the decline of brand competitiveness.

As a result, the sales of LTD's women's clothing brands and sports fashion brands have declined significantly in recent years due to the downturn in the U.S. economy.

The only one who bucks the trend is Victoria's Secret, which focuses on underwear.

Simon also privately wondered if this was the legendary 'lipstick effect'.

However, in the 90s, LTD began to turn more attention to the operation of Victoria's Secret, and returned to the 'limited brand' business strategy of focusing on the core brand, which was probably inspired by the performance of Victoria's Secret market in the early 90s.

LTD's headquarters are located in Columbus, Ohio.

Located in the northeastern United States, bordered by Pennsylvania to the east and the Great Lakes to the north, Ohio is located in the eastern plains as far as the eye can see, unlike the winding and mountainous western states. As the capital of Ohio, Columbus sits right right in the middle of this plain.

After Simon and Janet returned from Australia, they quickly accepted Leslie Wexney's invitation to visit Columbus, Ohio.

Of course, there are other reasons for this.

Simon's 'butterfly effect' on the world is becoming more and more obvious, but it doesn't change what happened.

For example, the Los Angeles riots at the end of April 1992.

The cause of the incident was that in March 1991, Rodney King, a young black man, was beaten by Los Angeles police officers for drunk driving, arrest and other behaviors.

On April 28, the Los Angeles District Court acquitted the four police officers involved on the basis of a complete account of the incident, which sparked discontent among the black community, which in turn led to mass riots.

Although the riots only occurred in South Central Los Angeles in memory, who knows if there will be any unusual changes this time.

As soon as it happened, Simon quietly left Los Angeles and joined Janet from New York in Columbus.

For habitual reasons, Columbus City has already purchased a 50-acre farm-style estate in advance.

Unlike Los Angeles and other large cities along the coast, Columbus is a quiet city in the Central Plains. It's understandable that Ohio has a much lower percentage of people of color than the East and West Coast states, and the percentage of whites is still above 90 percent.

Simon didn't feel much about the riots, and this isn't the first time it's happened in the country.

At the farm estate in the northern suburbs of Columbus, Leslie Wexnay didn't mean to talk about this sensitive event.

As far as politicians are concerned, it is wrong to take either side in this matter, so President Bush only came forward two days after the riots and made a few painful appeals. It's an election year, and the candidates are surprisingly tight-lipped about the riots.

Simon and Leslie Wexnay are both public figures, and even if they don't have the scruples of politicians, they will only be wrong if they say too much.

Although it is clear that a country's move towards a certain extreme political correctness is often the result of this constant silent retreat, Simon does not mean to change anything in the slightest.

For the world, he has always positioned himself as a passerby.

You can't talk much about politics, of course, it's still about business.

Today is May 1st, and before you know it, it is the end of spring and the beginning of summer.

Walking along the busy farm road, ignoring the distractions of the outside world, the mood is also very comfortable unconsciously.

During his time in Columbus, Simon has been non-stop with Leslie Wexney discussing the next steps for LTD.

LTD's woes in recent years have shown that the company must make a change.

In the original time and space, LTD abandoned many peripheral brands to focus on the operation of Victoria's Secret, which is the result of this change.

However, combined with the information in his memory, Simon found that LTD could actually make another attempt.

Now that it has proven to be very successful, the Victoria's Secret brand must be retained through the sexy marketing method of Victoria's Secret Angel, but for LTD's women's fashion and sports fashion businesses, Simon also proposed to Leslie Waxnay another concept of 'fast fashion' that has been gradually taking shape in recent years but has not grown.

Many years later, some of the world's most famous affordable fashion brands, Zara, H&M and GAP, are all operating in 'fast fashion'.

To put it simply, fast fashion is a model that quickly promotes the fashion trends displayed by major fashion weeks in a relatively cheap consumer field in a very short period of time.

First-class design, second-rate brand, third-rate price, this is a very visual summary of fast fashion brands.

Frankly speaking, the so-called fast fashion is actually a rapid copycat imitation of the fashion trends created by the major top luxury brands.

In Simon's memory, the Zara brand has to pay tens of millions of euros in infringement fees every year for copying the designs of top luxury brands, and it will be sued twice in three days. However, the company has never changed its business strategy, and the tens of millions of euros in infringement fees per year are really not worth mentioning compared to the huge profits involved.

Zara's boss, Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, also once squeezed out Warren Buffett with this world-class fashion brand and became one of the top three richest people in the world with a net worth of tens of billions of dollars.

Whether it is Spain's Zara, Sweden's H&M or the United States' GAP, the three fashion giants have been established many years later, but D already has a deep foundation in the fashion field, and it is not too late to lay out in advance before the three giants completely rise.

The affordable fashion chain has developed to a certain extent, and the further breakthrough of the brand has been a problem that has plagued Leslie Waxnay for a long time.

Unlike luxury brands, affordable fashion is too easy to homogenize, and it is difficult to make your own brand and characteristics.

Simon's concept of 'fast fashion' in recent days has given Leslie Waxnay a sense of enlightenment.

As for the business ethics risks such as plagiarism and imitation that may be involved, there is no psychological burden at all for a businessman who has been in the mall for decades.

After a few days of discussion, Leslie Wexnay also accepted Simon's suggestion.

In the next step, while focusing on the promotion of the Victoria's Secret brand, LTD also plans to integrate its fashion business and use LTD's earliest established brand foundation called 'Express' to create a fast fashion brand.

In addition, LTD will also sell some of its non-core businesses, which is certainly not the kind of sale that followed the leveraged buyout in the 80s, and the proceeds from the sale of assets will be used to develop the 'VS' and 'Express' brands.

"Simon, I thought about the lingerie show you talked about yesterday and I thought about it again last night, and it was a great idea. However, if you envision a group of the best models in the fashion industry and have to do a TV broadcast, the budget is a bit too high, and maybe we could have made it a little easier at first. ”

"I've also considered the budget," Simon smiled and said, "Rice, it's better to be like this, this big show is co-produced by Daenerys Entertainment and LTD, and both parties share 50% of the budget, and Daenerys Entertainment is responsible for the distribution of TV platforms and videotapes and other channels." ”

Walking along the green farm roads, the scenery is pleasant, but the people are not drunk.

Leslie Weeksner quickly calculated.

Simon knew both Leslie Wexnay and Leslie Wexnay, and Wexnay studied the young man's career more carefully.

Daenerys Entertainment can sell a Gucci brand documentary tens of millions of dollars at the box office, and Madonna's concert documentary can sell at the box office, so it is difficult to say whether this fashion show will have the same value.

"So, Simon, we share the budget, and the profits should be shared, right?"

Simon glanced at the middle-aged man in his fifties beside him and said, "Rice, LTD can get a big promotion of the Victoria's Secret brand just by spending half of the budget, isn't that enough?"

"But, after all, we are shouldering half of the budget. ”

Leslie Wexnay hesitated, whether he still had a promise that LTD could cover the entire production budget.

Because, according to the assumption of the young man next to him, such a big show could not be taken without tens of millions of dollars.

Investing tens of millions of dollars at once for a fashion brand catwalk is really risky.

Moreover, this also requires Simon to be personally responsible for planning, and even, even inviting those top supermodels, also needs Simon Westeros's connections.

Although Victoria's Secret has performed very well, it is only an affordable underwear brand after all.

For many supermodels, walking the catwalk for such a brand is a bit cheap. If it's still with other supermodels, it's even more valuable. However, if it was a project for Simon Westeros, it would probably be more acceptable.

Leslie Wexney still knows about the two 'waist spirits' and 'leg spirits' that suddenly rose in the fashion industry last year.

Westeros created two supermodels with just one ticket.