In another period of history, the background of the establishment of Ant Financial in 2014 is that Ma Feng hopes that Alipay will embark on the road of internationalization (of course, it is also because of the official completion of Alipay's split of Alipay in this year, and it can be listed on the NASDAQ). Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

If Ant Financial is not set up and Alipay is directly killed, then every time it enters a country's market, it is necessary to give the country's specific cooperative financial institutions (generally the country's own banks, with a full set of financial licenses) the qualification to take shares.

In this way, once Alipay enters dozens of countries, it will soon become a hodgepodge of chaotic shareholding structures for each country that pulls a new shareholder. Moreover, the partners of various countries will lie down and wait to eat the big pot of rice, losing the motivation to help Alipay push it.

Therefore, the best solution is to have a partner who holds a specific financial license in any country to invest in a specific country's subsidiary under the name of Ant Financial. If there are several national licenses, they will enter the subsidiaries of several countries, but will not enter the parent company of the controlling company.

In this way, there will be no "Fuso Bank worked hard to help promote Alipay, and as a result, Mi Guo Bank benefited together" or vice versa, and the specific partners of each country will be more motivated.

Gu Cheng has started the internationalization process of Alipay many years in advance - although he does not rely on the multinational e-commerce of physical goods, but on the output of content products to complete this, the hundreds of thousands of users in Dongyi, and even the tens of thousands of users in Fusang, opened Alipay only to vote for idols on the Internet. In these countries, Alipay also lacks a broader application scenario base.

However, this does not prevent Gu Cheng from borrowing some advanced architectural contexts that are easy to see and using them for his own use.

He didn't even feel the need to change the name of Ant Financial, and just used it - although he never knew how the name of Ant Financial came about.

After decentralizing the equity structure in this way, the pressure on Gu Cheng will be much less.

In the past two years, with the growth of Alipay, the invisible constraints on his shoulders have become more and more obvious. Especially from the problem of licenses, if you don't find a few local snakes to buy shares, people always have to find a way to often come up with policies to block Alipay.

On the other hand, it has been more than two and a half years since Ahri's Taobao opened at the beginning of 03. In 03 and 04, because Taobao was not yet a climate, it basically relied on Alipay, which had a first-mover advantage, to accelerate the development of Taobao.

But by 05, the number of stores on Taobao has exceeded 200,000 (the BUFF of Gu Cheng's butterfly effect has been calculated), and Taobao users have also equaled Alipay users at the beginning of the year. Since then, it has begun to enter the situation of Taobao dragging Alipay forward.

If Ma Feng is never allowed to take even a little advantage in Alipay, it will definitely lead to Taobao not pushing Alipay in the end.

All these prompted Gu Cheng to sort out the issue of Alipay's equity partners in various countries from the top-level design level at one time.

……

Ding Sanshi took a moment to turn this corner in his mind, and suddenly felt a little unhappy:

"So, do you mean that the 5% of Alipay's equity you promised me to replace last time is only 5% of Alipay (Huaxia) in the future? The many benefits that Alipay will get in the future internationalization process have nothing to do with me? That's not what we wrote in our previous equity swap memorandum! If you don't give an explanation, I have the right to prevent you from reconstructing Alipay's equity structure! ”

After all, when Ding Sanshi reached a deal with Gu Cheng in April and May, Alipay already had a handful of overseas users, and Ding Sanshi asked himself if Gu Cheng had no reason to remove Alipay's overseas growth dividend from his due proportion.

In the face of Ding Sanshi's questioning, Gu Cheng explained sincerely: "What I Gu said will naturally be counted, and the purpose of coming today is to hope that Brother Ma or Brother Ding will contact a domestic excellent bank and financial institution to buy some shares of Alipay (Huaxia) together, and continue to expand the company's future promotion."

Of course, if your own business needs internationalization and can provide a driving engine for Alipay's internationalization, I will naturally not hesitate to give up the equity of the parent company Ant Financial as a bargaining chip, but it depends on whether you have the ability to do so. ”

Ding Sanshi and Ma Feng both thought silently for a while, and did not express their position immediately.

Gu Cheng's meaning is very clear: want to invest in the future parent company of Alipay? Yes, if you have the ability to contribute to the global promotion of Alipay and have the relevant resources, rather than just contributing to the promotion of Alipay in a certain country, then it is too late for you to welcome you!

For example, if there is a person in the world who says that he has a good eye in the financial regulators of governments around the world, he can help Gu Cheng get financial licenses from all countries in the world and ensure that Alipay is opened and the license is delivered. So even if he asked Gu Cheng to take out 30% of Ant Financial's shares as a reward, maybe Gu Cheng would agree.

If you can only help Alipay's promotion in China, why do you want to take you all over the world to pretend to fly with you? Just take you in the country and pretend to take you to fly?

Listening to Gu Cheng's straightforward statement, Ma Feng and Ding Sanshi both fell into deep thought.

Ma Feng's first reaction was: "Is it possible to let foreigners also open stores on Taobao on a large scale?" Or do a business that allows foreigners to open stores and purchase overseas purchases? ”

Ding Sanshi's first reaction was: "Is it possible for Huang Yi to come up with a few online games that Fusang people and Dongyi people love to play, or to develop a few games on Ah Cheng's newly launched STEAM platform, and then only Alipay can be paid, and foreigners must buy them?" ”

If these two problems do not give a positive solution, then Gu Cheng only gives them the opportunity to invest in "Alipay (Huaxia)" and not the parent company "Ant Financial", and they have nothing to say.

In the end, it was the old and serious horse wind that took the lead in speaking:

"This matter cannot be solved in a sentence or two - even if we make a promise, I believe that you will not believe it. Otherwise, let's compromise. You symbolically allow us to invest a little bit of Ant Gold services, at least 1% or more, so that we can get certain shareholder rights and qualifications.

For the rest, we can sign an option subscription agreement for VAM. According to the promotion results in the next two to three years, the qualifications for subsequent increases in Ant Financial will be determined. For example, I'm going to go back and get a copy of Ahri's overseas shopping plan, and promise the development of overseas users at that time.

If the number of overseas shopping franchisees in Fusang, Miguo, and Dongyi reaches a certain level within two years, the number of users who pay and receive payments, and the transaction flow reaches the corresponding indicators, then you can also give me a top price in the agreement, promising me what proportion of Ant Financial shares I can buy at this price. ”

When Gu Cheng heard this, the risk of this plan to both parties was relatively small, and it belonged to "talking about the curative effect", so he agreed in principle.

Ding Sanshi saw Ma Feng's statement, and after thinking about it again and again, he could only agree.

However, because Gu Cheng came forward to integrate resources, and he holds more than half of Huang Yi's equity, the future trajectory of Huang Yi in this world will obviously not be so chaotic, and he will only focus on news, content, and email. What coincides with YY's Yixin, Alipay's overlap, and even Koala Haitao, which coincides with Ahri's Haitao, I'm afraid it won't appear.

Gu Cheng can push Ding Sanshi to the pinnacle of content producers, making it an absolute benchmark for domestic online games, and also has a place in domestic music and literature, but outside the content industry, Huang Yi may not have any more opportunities.

Therefore, Ding Sanshi's only performance gambling can only start from the perspective of "developing a game that foreigners must play".

……

After some mediation, the equity exchange between Gu Cheng and Huang Yi was finally completed before the fourth quarter of 05. Huang Yi was officially delisted from the Nasdaq in September, and Gu Cheng's holding company acquired a 60% stake in Huang Yi.

Huang Yi's other original shareholders have cross-acquired 10% of the equity of YY Entertainment, 5% of the equity of Alipay (Huaxia), and 2% of the equity of Ant Financial.

Ahri Baba currently has no cash, so it can only use Ahri's equity to exchange for Ant Financial and Alipay's equity.

Originally, when Gu Cheng lent money to Ma Feng to buy Sun Zhengyi's Yahoo Huaxia last year, Gu Cheng had already obtained 14% of Ahri Baba's equity, and Ma Feng himself also increased his holdings by 6%, reaching 18%. Later, when Sun Zhengyi successively threw out Ahri's equity to raise money for Legendary Entertainment, Gu Cheng and Ma Feng went around in circles to buy back.

So before the current transaction, Gu Cheng already owned about 18% of Ahri Baba's shares, and Ma Feng himself owned 21%. The remaining shares are in the hands of other management (Ahri and Arhats) and outside investors. And Sun Zhengyi's Softbank system, because of legendary entertainment last year, has basically been washed out of Ahri.

Now, Ahri Baba is willing to take out another 6% of the equity to replace 3% of Ant Financial shares and 10% of "Alipay (Huaxia)" shares, this valuation is basically recognized by both sides (the market value of Ahri Baba in later generations is four to five times that of Alipay, but it is currently 05 years, which is not so disparity)

As a result, after the replacement, Gu Cheng's shares in Ahri Baba have risen from 18% to 24%, and there is a faint hope that Ahri will be close to the status of the largest shareholder - of course, in fact, because the original Alipay company nominally has a lot of shares of Pan Jieying, so the corresponding Ahri shares replaced by Pan Jieying will also let Pan Jieying hold a part of it.

Therefore, Gu Cheng, the largest shareholder, is still invisible for the time being.

In addition to Ahri and Huang Yi, after Gu Cheng and Ma Feng conspired, combined with the current attitude of major domestic commercial banks towards the online banking industry, the strength of the bank itself, and even the current technical reserves and compatibility of online banking, they decided to pull a commercial bank to invest in Ant Financial with cash to completely solve the domestic license problem.

In 2005, the four major banks of China Industrial and Industrial Construction and Diplomatic Relations did not have a very good attitude towards online banking, and many of them did not even do a good job of U shield compatibility, and they were gloomy. It is impossible for Gu Cheng to simply consider his strength in order to choose a large state-owned bank backer.

In the end, after screening, Gu Cheng and Ma Feng chose the relatively enlightened China Merchants Bank as their partner, and planned to take out no more than 5% of Ant Financial shares and no more than 15% of Alipay (Huaxia) shares to negotiate with China Merchants Bank for the first round of huge shares.