The war has begun!

In business practice, a general acquisition is one? Words that are more derogatory than positive. For a company that has been in business for many years, if another company wants to annex itself, it can only be regarded as a win-win or bona fide acquisition if it puts forward conditions that can satisfy its own management and majority shareholders relatively well. Once the other party's acquisition damages the interests of the management and some shareholders, then the acquisition is a 'hostile takeover' or a 'hostile takeover'.

Obviously, the Goldston family, who have controlled the management of Standard Chartered Bank for many years, is not willing to give up the management of Standard Chartered Bank, and in 86, even Lloyd, a banking giant that is also at the forefront of the UK's domestic strength, tried to acquire Standard Chartered.

Therefore, Kowloon Bank held a press conference to officially announce to the outside world that it would launch an acquisition of Standard Chartered. At the same time, he finally reacted while panicking, Zhuang Beisi held a press conference again, with a calm face and a tough attitude: "...... Over the past few years, the bank's performance has been steadily rising, which has attracted countless coveted eyes. We had just experienced a hostile takeover a few years ago, but Standard Chartered did not welcome this kind of business practice that harmed the interests of the bank and the vast majority of shareholders, and we quickly repelled them when we fought back. So after a few years, I still have to advise those who have started the Standard Chartered idea again, if you insist on doing it, it will be a war! ”

With Standard Chartered's tough press conference, the old British bank immediately started running at high speed.

The Goldston family also raised nearly £200 million in a very short period of time, and began to buy into Standard Chartered shares in the London stock market, pulling the stock price up 7% on the same day, while also mobilizing all the connections to work around.

At the same time, Standard Chartered executives are also in action.

Zhuang Beisi still did not give up persuading the Kowloon Bank or the Lin family behind it to give up the acquisition of Standard Chartered, he knew that Hong Kong is a humane society, although the Kowloon Bank and the Lin family and Standard Chartered did not cooperate much in the past and did not have a direct contact channel, but still through the bank's deep connections in Hong Kong, he moved a number of Chinese businessmen who had a close relationship with the Lin family to lobby the Lin family on their behalf.

Sir Daria, who had just been promoted to chairman of the board of directors of Standard Chartered Bank two years ago, took it upon himself to use the extensive network he had established as the president of Standard Chartered Hong Kong for more than ten years to contact small and medium-sized shareholders who held a large number of Standard Chartered shares, or persuade them not to sell their shares to Kowloon Bank. So while urging the top management to increase their stake in Standard Chartered, he did not forget to plan for the worst, that is, to repeat the strategy he used in '86 to defeat the Lloyds Bank takeover - to find four or five more loyal white knights for the bank to guard Standard Chartered.

White Knight is a term in the securities industry, which means that when a company finds itself falling prey to another company, and it is unable to resist the hostile takeover of the other party, it can find one or several friendly companies and forces on its own, and the latter will come forward to start a panic buying war with the hostile acquirer. The appearance of the White Knight can avoid the lack of strength of the prey company face-to-face with the hostile acquirer to start a large-scale acquisition and anti-takeover battle, however, the White Knight is not everyone can do it, because the appearance of a white Knight means that there is an additional major shareholder, and it is very likely to turn into another black Knight who covets itself in the future, so looking for the White Knight needs to be cautious and cautious.

Even though Standard Chartered has been operating in Hong Kong for more than a century and has a wide and deep network second only to HSBC, it is not easy to find a few qualified white knights for the bank.

In the past, Sir Dalya said that he moved the Chinese ship king Bao Yugang, Singapore's richest man Qiu Teck Puat and Australian hotel giant Robert Hum to serve as the white knights of Standard Chartered.

But what is the final result, Qiu Teck Puat has been increasing his stake in Standard Chartered since the last takeover war, and anyone can see that he also has thoughts about Standard Chartered; Robert Holm sold on the dip several times, and he didn't care about knocking down the stock price of Standard Chartered; After Bao Yugang's death, the ship's king family changed hands, and under the pull of the Lin family, they sold a large number of Standard Chartered shares to the opponent who threatened Standard Chartered this time......

All of this has forced Standard Chartered to be more cautious when trying to choose a new White Knight to deal with the acquisition.

As for why Standard Chartered Bank, which is stronger than Kowloon, is so passive in the face of acquisitions, the main reason is to blame the Coston family, which has controlled Standard Chartered for half a century.

Gorston was originally just a Standard Chartered senior class, but during his tenure, due to the war in Chinese mainland, a large number of wealthy Chinese who could not escape made him a lot of money. Soon after, World War II broke out, and during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, they plundered a lot of wealth from Standard Chartered and HSBC, but after the war, Goldtown was recommended to reorganize Standard Chartered because of his close relationship with the Governor of Hong Kong, and gradually took control of Standard Chartered management in the following ten years, and became a shareholder of the bank.

Despite holding the control of Standard Chartered for half a century, the Goldston family has never held a majority of Standard Chartered shares. Especially after the introduction of many institutional investors in the bank's listing, the standard chartered shares held by his family have never exceeded 10%. With such a small share, it is reluctant to control the huge Standard Chartered Bank, not to mention that Standard Chartered is still a listed bank, even if the bank is strong, it does not mean that the Cowston family is also financially strong.

As soon as Standard Chartered moved, Song Nianhui immediately felt the pressure.

First of all, under the public relations of Standard Chartered, many media have turned their guns to Kowloon to make trouble, and the "Oriental Daily", which has always been on the wrong path with Lin Xiaozhi, has the most eye-catching performance, and has issued four consecutive issues to question the Lin family's financial resources After just taking out nearly 4 billion yuan to acquire UCT Cinemas, they are no longer able to fight a high-level acquisition war with the wealthy Standard Chartered.

Next Magazine, which has been holding back for more than a year and has not dared to make waves, almost hoarsely accused the Kowloon Bank of secretly misappropriating depositors' deposits to acquire Standard Chartered.

Not to mention, under the continuous media bombardment, there are really many bank depositors who do not know the truth to run on it. Fortunately, because of the previous run storm, since Lin Xiaozhi became the owner, the scale of Media Asia's external loans has been compressed to an absolutely safe level, so Song Nianhui arranged for bank personnel to persuade and guide, if depositors insist on withdrawing cash, they will be open to withdrawal, but they are not flustered.

If it doesn't work, Standard Chartered has other means.

As a veteran British bank, although Standard Chartered is not as strong as the four major British banks, its influence on the British government in Hong Kong has always been not small. Under the activities of Standard Chartered's senior management, the Hong Kong government soon expressed its 'concern' about the acquisition. First of all, a number of officials of the regional council bureau tactfully persuaded Lin Xiaoyi, who was serving as a district councilor, and repeatedly hinted that the Lin family would accept it if they saw it. Not long after, Financial Secretary Michael McGaulle personally invited Lam to attend a government reception, at which he sought the opportunity to have a private interview with him for more than 20 minutes, repeatedly pointing out that he hoped to maintain the stability of the financial order before Hong Kong's return to the motherland!

Fortunately, the Lin family has become a general trend, and the Hong Kong government is also a little jealous of his influence, and secondly, he still has not given up the idea of winning over him, so the people he contacted did not directly persuade him to give up his shareholding in Standard Chartered, but mostly tactfully persuaded him to accept it when he sees it, and to be a major shareholder of Standard Chartered with peace of mind, and not to fight for control of the bank.

As the news of Standard Chartered's takeover by a local bank in Hong Kong came back to the UK, not only did many domestic media pay attention to it, but it also quickly attracted the attention of the London authorities, and the pressure on Kowloon Bank and the Lam family also increased.

Soon after, the English Standard reported on the discussion of the hostile takeover of Standard Chartered Bank in the British House of Commons, and Richard Graham, a hawkish MP from Gloucestershire, England, debated in parliament that "Britain has a responsibility to uphold the principles of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, guarantee freedom of speech and judicial independence under the rule of law in Hong Kong in the future, and maintain its financial independence from any external factors", and loudly called for the London government to intervene to prevent the future issuance of Hong Kong dollars from being taken away by the Chinese.

Like a hornet's nest, the mountain-like pressure quickly fell on the Kowloon Bank and the Lin family.

Thanks to these in advance, Song Nianhui and others also speculated, although they also began to worry about the attitude of the London authorities, but he first made various arrangements and counterattacks in Hong Kong, buying a few days for Lin Xiaozhi, and then in order to avoid the suspicion of the senior management of Standard Chartered, he personally led a delegation to Singapore to visit Qiu Depu, which bought Lin Xiaozhi about ten days.

After he had eaten enough soft nails again in Singapore, although Qiu Teck Puat did not express his dissatisfaction with the Lin family's use of himself to attract the attention of Standard Chartered Bank, but repeatedly said that he would not sell his Standard Chartered shares to anyone, when he led a delegation to the United Kingdom, Lin Xiaozhi's contact with Schroder Group was nearing the end, because the price he offered was much higher than that of Schroder when he first bought it, and finally shouted 3 after him. The high price of 9.7 billion pounds when the other side has raised the white flag and agreed to hold 7. 62% of the shares of Standard Chartered were sold to him.

The next stage is Lloyds Bank, which focuses on tackling key problems and still has some ideas about Standard Chartered, coupled with the shares they have continuously absorbed from the secondary market over the past few days, so far, Kowloon Bank has eaten 37 successively. 2% of Standard Chartered shares are getting closer and closer to controlling Standard Chartered.

"Congratulations to Lin Sheng, Lloyds Bank also seems to have realized that they have completely lost the opportunity to acquire Standard Chartered, although they reluctantly shouted a sky-high price, but their attitude has changed, and the rest is the problem that can be solved through negotiation! In order not to let Standard Chartered react, I will try to win Lloyd's as soon as possible, the investment department is also in the secondary market with the Standard Chartered official to grab the shares in the hands of retail investors, if we can eat some more, we are not far from controlling Standard Chartered! ”

Song Nianhui, who said that he had moved Lloyds Bank within two days of coming to London, was in a good mood, and opened a bottle of Potus with Lin Xiaozhi in the hotel, his face full of excitement.

At first, Lin Xiaozhi had no idea of acquiring Standard Chartered, but it was after repeated persuasion that he said that he had made such a large investment. So far, they have invested more than 2.2 billion pounds into it, and they see that the secret accounts that Lin Xiaozhi has accumulated in the past are about to be emptied, but they have finally seen some results.

"What we have to do now is to take advantage of the victory, and in addition to continuing the talks with Lloyd, I am also going to find out with Aberdeen Asset Management tomorrow."

Lin Xiaozhi nodded, and the joy in his eyes was unbearable, "The rest will be left to you!" ”

He is naturally willing to do it, in fact, for a period of time before, he haunted the residences and companies of Standard Chartered shareholders every day, not only to avoid media attention but also to be careful not to be discovered by Standard Chartered executives, and in just ten days, he felt more tired than he had been in the crew for several months, and even could only spare a small amount of time every night to supervise the post-processing of his new work "The Mummy" that had just been completed through international calls.

Fortunately, SESI and Media Asia Special Effects have been running in for several years and have begun to become a climate, but as a director and his head is full of ideas and creativity for the post-production of his new film, it is a kind of torture for him to not be able to stay in Hong Kong to supervise the post-production of the film.

Now, after Song Nianhui got out, he is now fully responsible for the acquisition plan of Standard Chartered, which allows him to finally take a breath.

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