"I can't bully Stari, I can't bully you?"

Cao Mo grabbed Zhou Han's hand who wanted to leave, hugged her slender and soft waist, knocked her chin on her shoulder, and looked at this flawless beautiful face up close, her fair skin was like mutton fat jade, revealing a healthy luster, a straight nose bridge, red lips, long and dense eyelashes, her eyes were so deep and clear, her hands clasped her waist and said,

"Shall we go back to the tribe for a few days, the kind that doesn't have to worry about anything?"

During this time, he secretly induced the evolution of the situation in Akwa, and had to erase all the clues as much as possible, and his nerves were very tight, and he could not relax for a moment.

Although whether it is in Benin or in Akwa, Cao Mo can steal some meat from Zhou Han and Stari, and Song Yuqing also went to Africa during this period and got together with him for a while, but the matter is over for the time being, Cao Mo is still eager to take a few days off, don't care about anything, and relax completely.

"Okay!" Zhou Han stretched his waist, looked at Cao Mo's well-defined face, thinking about living on the lakeside of the Ibogu tribe for a few days, not having to worry about anything, sleeping until he woke up naturally every day, swimming, riding horses, hunting in the woods, and drinking and eating barbecue around the campfire at night, it was really beautiful to think about.

Then the next moment the beautiful dream was shattered by reality.

“......”

The mobile phone that Cao Mo usually uses for work contact vibrated on the office desktop.

Cao Mo glanced at the phone, ignored it, and said with a smile: "Why don't you throw that phone away......" The face was buried in Zhou Han's chest willfully.

After making Cao Mo willful for a while, Zhou Han gently patted his cheek, helped him take the mobile phone that was still stubbornly vibrating, and looked at the encrypted number displayed on the screen:

"I don't know what's going on, you still can't be lazy!"

Cao Mo answered the phone, but it was Sturgeon Foster's voice, saying, "I just have something to contact you, are you going back to Draculamo?"

"There's a meeting at headquarters in the morning, rush back to Dracula - what's going on with you?" asked Sturgeon Foster curiously.

“...... Ryan Fortis and Moberly, a member of the Evans Foundation Board of Trustees, may push Lekki Mining to buy the Boesso Iron Mine, but cooperate with the Catelo Iron Works...... "Cao Mo briefly told Sturgeon about the latest situation between the Evans Foundation and Liang Yuan, and curiously asked him if there was anything he wanted to contact by encrypted phone.

Even at this moment, the relationship between Tianyue and Volkov Investment can continue to be hidden under the water, and it will definitely have no disadvantages.

At this time, Cao Mo had only completed the indirect shareholding and capital injection of Folkofi Investment in the form of a secret trust fund, and was not in a hurry to carry out the capital injection into Banco Nacional Ultramarino for the time being.

Sturgeon is also a senior vice president at Banco Nacional Ultramarino.

The staff around him, even the bodyguards and chauffeurs, who were employed by Banco Nacional Ultramarino, could not guarantee absolute loyalty to Sturgeon personally.

In order not to startle the snake, Sturgeon has no intention of making any adjustments to the staff around him for the time being, so he and Cao Mo usually use encrypted email to contact as much as possible, and rarely use encrypted phone to communicate, so as not to have ears on the wall.

"West Africa Cement Group, the performance in the first three quarters of this year was very bad, and the previous expansion was too fast, cash flow was about to run out, most investors have lost patience, worried that if it continues to delay, the situation will get worse - has Conero Cement thought about the possibility of merger with West Africa Cement Group? If you have this idea, I will take the West Africa Cement Group information and find a place to meet with you......," Sturgeon said.

"Are you still at the headquarters of Banco Nacional Ultramarino, then you will come out of Banco Nacional Nacional alone in half an hour, and I will arrange for a car to pick you up - we will meet at the Ibogu tribe!" Cao Mo said.

............

............

After a few years, the wooden buildings on the lakeside have not been newly renewed, the wooden roof eaves have left traces of wind and rain erosion, and the foot of the wall is also covered with moss, but the trees grow more and more luxuriantly on this fertile land, more and more quiet, and more and more flowers.

Cao Mo and Zhou Han hurried back to the tribe, the old chieftain Felician and Ovie Ma were sitting by the lake fishing, he sat on the rocky ground, discussed the secret of fishing for a while, and soon it got dark.

Abacha, Brahm, and Wendy Scarfe, the chief executive of Conero Cement, arrived separately from Sturgeon after sunset.

After the commissioning of Conero Cement's new plant in Cotonou, the annual production capacity exceeded 6 million tons in one fell swoop, and the expansion rate can be described as jaw-dropping.

However, the West African Cement Group, controlled by the Stanning family, has not been slow to expand in recent years, and now has an annual production capacity of 6 million tons.

At present, Conero Cement and West African Cement Group account for almost 40% of the total cement market capacity in the Gulf of Guinea and Central African regions, while the third largest cement company in West Africa, the Crown Cement Group controlled by the Atessa family, is expanding at a slightly slower rate, but also accounts for about 12% of the Central and West African market.

To be honest, Cao Mo thought that Artesa Crown Cement Group would be the first to hold on, but he didn't expect that the investors behind West Africa Cement Group would lose patience at this time.

Banco Nacional Ultramarino also holds a small stake in the West Africa Cement Group, and Sturgeon brought over the relevant detailed materials, and Cao Mo and they have seen it, so it is not difficult to understand why the West Africa Cement Group can't bear it now.

To be honest, the predicament of West Africa Cement Group at this time also has a lot to do with Conero Cement.

Conero Cement will deploy its production base on the shore of Lake Conero, in addition to competing for the nearby Draculamo building materials market, the pace of expansion is also along the coastline of the Gulf of Guinea to attack the city and seize land, and the strategy of West Africa Cement Group is also to lay out the coastal area along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, and the two sides form the most direct competitive relationship.

In the past three or four years, benefiting from the rise in crude oil prices, the demand for building materials along the Gulf of Guinea has soared, and in the face of the aggressive expansion speed of Conero Cement, West African Cement Group has not slowed down its construction speed in recent years in order to maintain its market share.

The construction period of West Africa Cement Group's ton capacity is twice as high as that of Conero Cement, in addition to the sharp increase in the construction cost of the flat amortization, the delay in the production period has directly greatly compressed the profit accumulation in the market boom period.

Conero's subsequent capacity expansion mainly depends on profits, while West Africa Cement Group's capacity expansion mainly depends on capital injections from investors and loans from major financial institutions.

In addition to the high financial costs, West Africa Cement Group does not have its own power plant, so it can only compete with other industrial and mining enterprises for the limited local power supply, not to mention the difficulty of stable production, and the energy cost per ton of finished cement is twice as high as that of Conero cement.

Not to mention the gap between the two sides in terms of operational management.

All in all, when the price of finished cement in major coastal cities along the Gulf of Guinea such as Draculamo is less than 120 US dollars, Conero Cement can still maintain an ultra-high gross profit margin of more than 50%, while West African Cement Group is already unprofitable.

However, in December last year, the average type of finished cement on the Gulf of Guinea coast fell to $100 per tonne, and in the second quarter of this year it fell to $80 per tonne.

In such a bleak market, Conero Cement hesitated to maintain a net cash inflow of more than $20 million per month, while West Africa Cement Group's losses in the first three quarters of this year had accumulated more than $160 million.

West Africa Cement Group's cash reserves were only enough to maintain production and operation for the next two months, and the management alerted the Stanning family and other investors to an emergency bailout early on, but the first reaction of the Stanning family and other investors was the corruption and incompetence of the management, which had a fatal erosion of the West African Cement Group.

Therefore, for a considerable period of time, the Stanning family hired a group of professional managers from the outside, reorganized the management of the West African Cement Group, and launched a "rectification" campaign internally.

While the Stanning family's actions had some positive effects, cleaning up some moths and sending more than a dozen members of the management to Draculamo's "inhumane" prison, the results of a thorough audit of West African Cement's finances by an externally hired accounting firm are not encouraging.

The production and sales costs of West Africa Cement Group are much higher than those of Conero Cement, and it is difficult to achieve less than 90 US dollars per ton no matter how low the production cost is without systematic upgrading.

It is no longer when the global economy will come out of the shadow of the crisis, and investors are more worried that maintaining the current expansion rate with Conero cement will cause a serious oversupply of cement supply in the entire West and Central Africa building materials market, and may push the price of finished cement below $100 per ton for a long time.

This also means that West Africa Cement Group will never see the light of day to turn a profit.

In contrast, the Crown Cement Group, controlled by the Atessa family, has an absolute leadership position in the inland market with poor transportation and is far from the coast, and is much less threatened by Conero Cement – the distance has become a natural protective wall for the Crown Cement Group.

The Stanning family made a cement import ban that year, offended too many people, and the two federal parliamentarians who had a good relationship with them collapsed, and investors could not see the possibility of bringing down the prosperous Conero Cement politically, so some people put forward the idea of merging West African Cement Group and Conero Cement.

After this idea was proposed, except for the resistance of the Stanning family, other investors were quite actively supportive.

Banco Nacional Ultramarino's equity in the West Africa Cement Group is not very high, and the senior management did not hold a meeting until this morning, and finally decided to support the merger and reorganization.

Sturgeon attended a high-level meeting within Banco Nacional Ultramarino this morning, and as soon as he learned about it, he ran over to report to Cao Mo.

The benefits of the merger are well seen by major investors.

The merger of the two cement groups will occupy 40% of the production capacity of the building materials cement market in Central and West Africa, especially in the coastal area of the Gulf of Guinea, which directly occupies a monopoly position, and the market competition no longer exists, and there is no need for the two sides to continue to expand production capacity in the coastal area for vicious competition.

In the end, this will not only avoid a complete collapse of the cement market price in the coastal area, but also make the cement price in the coastal area rise steadily.

In addition, the merger of West Africa Cement Group and Conero Cement will allow the power supply to bypass Dracula Power Group and be directly supplied by Conero Energy through the construction of a dedicated route.

At that time, the production base of West Africa Cement Group in Dasra will not only be able to get rid of the difficulties of power outages from time to time, but also completely stabilize the energy consumption cost per ton of finished cement.

"No problem! I'll wait for them to come to my door now!" Cao Mo is open to the merger of Conero Cement and West Africa Cement, and the key is to look at the conditions of the merger.

Tianyue will not be under less pressure on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in the future.

If you have the right conditions to form an alliance with the Stanning family and the other investors behind West African Cement Group, it will always be much better to force them to work with the Evans Foundation.

Although in the finished cement market in the coastal area of the Gulf of Guinea, Conero Cement will not be afraid of the West African Cement Group, and is confident that it will be completely defeated, but in this continent, the market problem will not be simply limited to the market field.

"That's the same idea for me," Sturgeon said, "I attended an internal meeting at Banco Nacional Ultramarino today to get the relevant information, and I took the time to study it a little bit at noon – I thought about it, it is more difficult for Conero Cement to directly acquire West African Cement Group at the 'right' price, and the difficulty is how to decide the 'right' price, and there will inevitably be great differences between the two sides." However, once the merger and restructuring negotiations are initiated, it is impossible to avoid the news that will spread, and in order to avoid asking the Evans Foundation to find an opportunity to intervene or sabotage, it is necessary to negotiate a cooperation as soon as possible, without delaying it for too long......"

Sturgeon rushed over to meet Cao Mo, in addition to ventilating the news, more importantly, hoping that there would be a relatively clear plan or expectation here.

He then used his position as director and senior vice president of Banco Nacional Ultramarino to push the investors of West Africa Cement Group to be as direct as possible to Tianyue's wishes when negotiating the merger plan internally.

In this way, the two sides can avoid repeated see-saw and indefinite delays in negotiations to the greatest extent.

"I have only one principle, that is, the final merger and reorganization of the cement group, the leading power of operation, the actual control of the operation can not be left in the hands of others, and in the process of merger and reorganization, it does not matter whether it is appropriate to let some interests out, after all, things have to be done, or everyone is happy," Cao Mo looked at Sturgeon and said, "Since you have come here, there must be a preliminary plan, you can tell us directly......

"......," Sturgeon said, "investors are mainly afraid of losing a lot of money, and if they are given enough benefits, they will not be interested in running the business, and as long as the majority of investors are supportive, the Stanning family will be reluctant and will no longer be an obstacle."

Before Sturgeon came over, he did consider the merger plan, but this had to be approved by Cao Mo first.

Although the scale of the Dracula Holm securities market is not large, there are still more than 10 or 20 companies listed publicly every year.

However, in addition to the fact that Conero Cement is controlled by overseas capital, the large size is also an obstacle to its direct listing in Draculamo.

After the merger of Conero Cement and West Africa Cement Group, the scale is larger, but the force behind its listing will also become stronger - initially those investors who participated in the investment of West Africa Cement Group were mainly to promote West Africa Cement to cash out from public securities after listing, but they did not expect Conero Cement to emerge.

At this time, in addition to the respective valuations of both parties, the key is to adjust the proportion of overseas capital in the newly established cement group after the merger to a level that meets the legal and regulatory requirements of Kanem, that is, Tianyue Investment, as an overseas capital, cannot hold more than 30% of the shares of the new cement group.

West African Cement and Conero Cement have similar production capacity, but profitability is very different, and there will inevitably be a huge gap in valuation.

"In such a bleak market environment, Conero Cement can still guarantee an annual net profit of 200 million US dollars, which is commendable, but after the merger of the West African Cement Group, the monopoly advantage in the coastal region of the Gulf of Guinea has been determined, even if the profitability will be further improved, the capital market will not think that the merged cement group still has much potential to tap. This will also directly limit the market value imagination space of the merged cement group after listing. At the same time, the capacity of the Dracula Hammer stock market is simply too limited. I have considered that the market value of the assets of Conero Cement should be between $1.5 billion after listing, while the market value of the assets of West African Cement should be around $500 million. The two parties will merge to form a new cement group in the corresponding market value ratio, and Tianyue Investment will hold 52.5% of the shares of the merged cement group, and 22.5% of the shares will need to be transferred out to meet Kanem's regulatory requirements for overseas capital shares of the company to be listed. And the market value of this part of the shares is 450 million US dollars, I can persuade investors to form a trust fund to take over this part of the shares, or I can persuade them to promise not to interfere in the operation of the combined cement group, but they must want Tianyue Investment to give up more profit space, I estimate that they can offer a maximum of 300 million US dollars......" Sturgeon said.

Sturgeon is now quite clear about the shareholding of Ibogu Mining and Conero Cement, and the plan he envisages is that Tianyue Investment will hold shares in the cement group after the merger and resale of a part of the shares, although it will be reduced to 30% according to Kanem's regulatory requirements, but the joint management shareholding and the Felician family, the Sika family, the Rupert family, the Blake family, etc., and the right amount of control will not lead to the loss of control, which should be the bottom limit of the merger plan that Cao Mo can accept.

"I think your forecast for the global economic situation is a little pessimistic," Cao Mo said, touching his forehead, "China's investment in the heavy chemical industry this year is very large, and it is likely that the strong demand for the global crude oil market will increase next year - this will directly stimulate the economic recovery of the countries along the Gulf of Guinea, and the demand for building materials will also recover strongly." And even if the coastal area market along the Gulf of Guinea is limited, it is difficult for us to increase too much share, and how difficult is it to penetrate the coastal market in Southwest Africa and Northwest Africa from Draculamo to the sea? I don't really care whether the West African Cement Group can make a profit, but a new plant with an annual output of 2 million tons will be laid at any time to meet the new market demand for the expansion of the Gulf of Guinea and the two wings to Southwest Africa and Northwest Africa. I don't care about whether cement prices will rebound, but I firmly believe that the profitability of Conero Cement will increase accordingly with the expansion of the market. Therefore, the valuation of this part of the shares is only $300 million, which is too cheap. ”

Cao Mo could understand that Sturgeon was trying to make this happen, mainly because he wanted to concede his interests in order to unite more powerful allies in the Gulf of Guinea.

Cao Mo has never been a stingy person, but the question is whether he will win friendship or more greedy covetousness by giving up his interests generously, which needs to be carefully weighed.

"The economic situation is so bad, and the investors related to West Africa Cement Group, at this time can come up with very limited funds - I have estimated as high as possible, 300 million US dollars is almost the limit of what they can come up with at present. Sturgeon said.

"300 million US dollars in exchange for a maximum of 12.5% of the shares, I can even give these investors a promise, if the new cement group is listed in Draculamo, this part of the shares will be reduced from the open market within three years to get less than 400 million US dollars, and I will be responsible for making up for the shortfall-cooperation, in addition to this part of the income, they are more important to keep their investment in West African cement, they can't imagine taking advantage of the cheap, we can't be too weak," Cao Mo said. Of course, even if I need to reduce my stake by 10% to meet Kanem's regulatory requirements, there is no need to replace this part of the shares with cash, and I don't mind if the shares of the Volkov Petrochemical Group and the shares of Banco Nacional Ultramarino are very different as long as the opening price is very different......"