Snyder undoubtedly values his own interests more than the interests of his shareholders.

In fact, the idea of selling Nice did not come from Snyder, and if he had a choice, he would prefer to keep Nice afloat. If the Nice company is sold, he will be the end of the CEO, and the new owner will definitely not give him such a position. And if the Nice company remains in the hands of the original shareholders, even if it is as sluggish as it is now, he can at least bear a false name and appear to have some identity in front of people.

However, the shareholders of the company will not take this into account, in their opinion, there is no hope for the rise of the company, and it is better to sell late than early. As for the impact of the sale on Snyder's identity, and what does it have to do with them?

This kind of contradiction between shareholders and managers is the popular "principal-agent problem" in economics, and there are differences in interests between principals and agents, so that the operation of enterprises cannot reach the theoretical optimum.

Snyder doesn't know what principal-agent model is, he only knows that if the Chinese are willing to buy Nice and are willing to let him stay in the management position of Nice Company, then these two in front of him are his future new owners, and they are new owners who can bring benefits to themselves.

"Mr. Xiao is right." Snyder organized the sentence in his heart, and then pretended to be reserved and said: "As a professional manager who has served in the Nice company for many years, I have a deep affection for the Nice company, and I hope to continue to contribute to the development of the Nice company." If your company is interested in acquiring the Nice company and is willing to continue to inject funds into the Nice company, then our interests should be completely aligned and can be fully exchanged. ”

"We are very pleased that Mr. Snyder is willing to cooperate with us in good faith." Qin Hai spoke, and Snyder had already handed over the letter of surrender, so he had no reason not to accept it. "We have come to negotiate the acquisition of Nice with a sincere desire to receive the brand, equipment and technology of Nice in its entirety, including all its technical staff. Our preliminary estimate of purchase price is $320 million. What does Mr. Snyder think of the price? ”

"This price is lower than the board's expectations, though. Given the sincerity of Mr. Xiao and Mr. Qin, I am willing to persuade the board to accept such a price. Snyder said.

In fact, the purchase price of $320 million is already higher than the board's expectations, and Snyder is fully confident that the board will accept the price. However, negotiation is like this, no matter how good the conditions are, you have to pretend to be embarrassed. in order to gain more benefits for themselves.

Qin Hai didn't debunk Snyder's lies, he didn't know how much the board of directors of Nice Company valued the company, so he wanted to acquire it at a premium, not without strings, and this additional condition was very difficult.

"Thank you, Mr. Snyder, for your cooperation." Qin Hai first affirmed Snyder, and then continued: "Please Mr. Snyder also explain our acquisition conditions in detail when reporting to the board of directors." We want to be able to get all of Nice's assets, and after the acquisition is completed, we will split Nice in two, with a portion of the assets remaining in the UK. Continued production; The other part of the assets needs to be dismantled and shipped back to China in order to make full use of China's cheap labor resources. This condition needs to be stated before the acquisition. ”

"Disassembly?" Snyder's eyebrows furrowed slightly: "Mr. Qin means to say." Are you going to ship some of the equipment back to China? ”

"Yes." Qin Hai nodded and said.

"I see." Snyder understood, no wonder these two Chinese would be so generous, it turned out that there was such an idea.

Semiconductor technology is so cutting-edge because of the complexity of the equipment involved. According to the classification of SEMI, that is, the "International Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Industry Association", semiconductor manufacturing equipment can be divided into seven categories: plate making equipment, wafer preparation equipment, film growth equipment, pattern processing equipment, doping equipment, microchip assembly equipment, and testing equipment. Each type of equipment contains a number of sub-categories, such as exposure machines in the so-called "pre-process" stage of semiconductor manufacturing. Gluing, developing device, wet corrosion equipment. Degluing machine, dry corrosion equipment. Diffusion/oxidation furnaces, ion implanters, sputtering tables, extended resistance meters, FTIR meters, scanning electron microscopes and dozens of different equipment.

It is very difficult to encompass the manufacturing of all these equipment with the power of one country, and Western countries are also able to establish such a huge semiconductor equipment manufacturing system. Then, in order to limit China's development in order to strategically maintain its advantage over China, Western countries imposed embargo restrictions on a considerable part of semiconductor equipment, which blocked China's channel for the development of the semiconductor industry. Although China has developed some equipment through the method of self-reliance, it is still very lacking compared with foreign levels.

Although Nice is only a second-rate enterprise in the international semiconductor market, its semiconductor manufacturing equipment is far more advanced than that of Chinese companies. Qin Hai paid a high price to buy the Nice company in order to obtain the equipment and ship it back to China.

Snyder was no stranger to these situations, and he also realized Qin Hai's plan. But he had to admit that this was a difficult problem for Qin Hai, because even the second-hand equipment that Nice had used was still within the scope of restrictions on exports to China, and it was very difficult to ship these equipment back to China.

"Mr. Qin, I'm sorry, you should know that some of our company's equipment is in the Batumi restricted list, if you want to disassemble these equipment back to China, I'm afraid it will be difficult to pass the audit of Batumi." Snyder said.

"Isn't Batumi already disbanded?" Xiao Weihao reminded softly on the side.

"Yes, Batumi has been disbanded, but this does not mean that the list of restrictions has been lifted." Snyder said, "I don't want to hide it, the Americans are initiating a Wassenaar arrangement, which, as far as I know, will completely inherit the list and rules of Batumi." ”

The so-called Batumi, whose full name is the "Paris Coordinating Committee", is a multilateral export control coordination committee initiated by the United States in November 1949, headquartered in the American Embassy in Paris, hence its name. Batumi's membership included the United States, the countries of Western Europe, and later Japan, and its purpose was to contain the development of socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and China.

In the organization of Batumi, there are three control lists, namely the International Atomic Energy List, the International Military Goods List and the Industrial List, which cover industrial machinery, electronic equipment, transport equipment, metallic materials, minerals and their finished products, chemical products, petroleum products, weapons, atomic substances and equipment, etc. When a member state needs to export the above-mentioned products and technologies to a restricted country, it is necessary to submit an application to Batumi and obtain the unanimous consent of all member states before issuing an export license.

Batumi is a product of the Cold War, so with the end of the Cold War, Batumi has become more and more lacking in reasons to exist. On March 29, 1994, a high-level meeting of the member states of Batumi was held in Wassena, the Netherlands, and it was decided to dissolve Batumi. The decision came into force on March 31, and Batumi finally came to an end.

However, anyone with a discerning eye can see that Batumi appeared nominally to curb the development of the military power of the socialist countries, but in fact it was to protect the technological superiority of Western countries so that Western manufacturers could rely on this advantage to grab super-profits on a global scale. The dissolution of Batumi did not mean that Western countries would abandon this policy idea of restricting the development of socialist countries, so the so-called Wassenaar arrangement came into being.

The Wassenaar Arrangement is a successor to Batumi, the origins of which can be traced all the way back to the Wassenaar Conference before the dissolution of Batumi, but the Wassenaar Agreement was finally formed in November 1996. The Wassenaar Accords provide for multilateral control of "conventional military goods" and "dual-use goods", which are goods and technologies that take into account both military and civilian use, including advanced materials, materials processing, electronic equipment, computers, telecommunications and information security, sensors and lasers, navigation and avionics, ships, propulsion systems and spacecraft. As to which scope is dual-commodity, it depends entirely on the two lips of the participating countries.

At this time, the Wassenaar Accords had not yet been formally signed, but as a CEO of Europe's high-tech industry, Snyder was able to know some of the details. It is precisely because of this that he knows how difficult it is to ship Nice equipment to China.

Qin Hai and Xiao Weihao glanced at each other, they had already heard about the Wassenaar agreement, and now they were not surprised to hear Snyder say it. However, Snyder was able to think of the Wassenaar agreement so sensitively, which they did not expect, and it seems that the Cold War nerves of the other side are still very tight.

"Nice is a civilian product company, whether it is Batumi, or the Wassenaar arrangement you just mentioned, it does not impose restrictions on civilian products, right? I don't think any other investor other than us would be willing to pay that price for Nice, as Mr. Snyder should know. Qin Hai said.

"Of course I do." Snyder is no longer pretending, and the conversation between smart people, it is not interesting to pretend to be stupid like this, it is just a waste of words.

Qin Hai's meaning was very clear, he actually thought of the problem of transportation restrictions, and he also knew that it was very difficult to transport these equipment back to China. It is precisely for this reason that he pays such a high price. Now he threw this hot potato to Snyder, and let the other party choose: either accept this price and find a way to help Qin Hai get these equipment; Either...... Then it can only be hehe. (To be continued)