Shortly after the kidnapping, there was a conviction from the VC firm that the $1 billion joint venture capital investment in SAL had been approved in principle, and although there would inevitably be controversy within the VC firm over the overvaluation, everyone had to admit that SAL was a very worthwhile investment.

In particular, speech recognition technology, which is unique in the world, has basically formed a de facto technology monopoly. Voice navigation device is not enough, to be honest, everyone has little expectations for this market, and it is basically the end of the 10 billion dollar to be able to do it.

What really attracts everyone is Cai Siqiang's ambition for the mobile phone market, which is not an order of magnitude compared to navigators. The annual sales volume can reach the market of one billion units, coupled with the unique voice recognition technology, tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars in sales can be achieved.

Look at Apple, everyone can't help but be a little enthusiastic when they think of this, and they all agree that SAL can accumulate experience in the production and sales of consumer electronics through navigators, which is a very beneficial experience for cutting into the mobile phone market in the future. What's more, SAL is still a sister company with MI that produces brainwave products, and no one knows how far brainwave technology can be applied, after all, this thing is too cutting-edge.

But we believe that brainwave technology is definitely not just applied to a few games, if you boldly imagine that one day brainwave technology and mobile phones can be combined, it is a new technological revolution. Being able to be at the forefront of the technological revolution is likely to be like investing in Intel in the 70s, Microsoft in the 80s, and Google in the late 90s.

So, after countless seminars, several venture capital bigwigs finally made up their minds to gamble on the future.

After the general direction was determined, Cai Siqiang found that it was not simple to talk about some details next, such a large investment, the company set up a board of directors, the seats of venture capital representatives on the board of directors, the schedule of capital investment, the legal documents of the venture capital agreement, etc., and there were many follow-up things, which were extremely professional.

Fortunately, Cai Siqiang finally understood that he was in control of the macro level, and for these micro operations, he directly hired a very prestigious professional consulting company in China to deal with them. In order to avoid being deceived by people who are blind and touching elephants, Cai Siqiang not only hired a professional team, but also recruited an expert to serve as the company's investment and financing director.

There are so many things that need to be cleaned up just to deal with the relevant aspects of the venture capital contract, and in order to start the merger work, the company needs to attract professionals from all aspects, including the top management team, as soon as possible, otherwise it would be a joke to just merge the company without relevant personnel management.

In this high-level expansion, Cai Siqiang directly recruited two assistant general managers, one to assist in domestic affairs and the other to assist in overseas affairs.

In domestic affairs alone, there are so many things to deal with that the general manager in charge of domestic affairs is busy all day long.

After the financial problem is solved, the implementation of overseas mergers and acquisitions is put on the agenda, the first thing to do is the preparation of the overseas acquisition team, in this aspect Cai Siqiang is a complete layman, but several venture capital bosses have extensive connections in this area, and soon recommended several good professional M&A consulting companies to Cai Siqiang.

As soon as the agreement is signed, everyone is a trench person, and Cai Siqiang is not afraid that a few venture capital bigwigs will hide their secrets in this regard, after all, one billion dollars is not a small amount.

After comparison, Cai Siqiang chose a consulting firm with rich experience in the European market as the main acquisition consultant, they not only have the first M&A business in the European market, but more importantly, they know the European listed companies well, who is the major shareholder, who is the behind-the-scenes controller.

Therefore, when the M&A services consulting agreement was signed, the consultants formulated two sets of plans for the SAL acquisition. Since SAL was preparing to acquire the company in cash, the consultant suggested that Cai Siqiang first contact several major shareholders to see if he could directly acquire the shares in the hands of the major shareholders to achieve control.

According to the information provided by the consultant, among the major shareholders of TOMTOM, Gerald, who has 27 percent, is the largest shareholder, he is one of the co-founders of TOMTOM, and is now the chairman of the board of directors.

The second largest shareholder with 24% is the current CEO Diabi, who is also one of the co-founders of TOMTOM, and in the early years, he worked with Gerard to make TOMTOM dominate the European market, but in recent years, due to disagreements with Gerard in the company's global expansion strategy, the two have repeatedly disagreed on major decisions.

The third largest shareholder, which holds 17 percent, is an investment company, and they have been entering TOMTOM at a low price in recent years to prepare for arbitrage, but TOMTOM has a long way to go, and this investment company has been very disappointed, but due to more investment, even if they want to exit, they can't find the next home to take over.

Therefore, in the consultant's plan, the first plan is mainly to acquire the shares in the hands of these three shareholders.

The first person Cai Siqiang visited was Gerald, the largest shareholder. Faced with this mysterious man from the East, Gerald was very surprised.

"Acquire my shares?" Gerald looked at Cai Siqiang, a little unable to believe his ears, when did the Orientals start to come to the Western market to stir up trouble?

"No, I have no intention of selling my shares, TOMTOM was built by me, and I will never give up." Gerald refused. In his mind, this is his company, and he definitely doesn't want people to interfere.

"Mr. Gerald, I think we'd better see the reality," the M&A consultant opened his notebook.

"In 2010, TOMTOM had an after-tax profit of 100 million euros, but in 2011, TomTom's profit became 68 million euros, in 2012 it was only 7 million euros, and this year, the semi-annual report shows a loss of 35 million euros in the first half of the year, and a loss of more than 50 million euros for the whole of this year."

"Frankly, no one at TOMTOM could have turned the tide without an injection of external funding or a technological breakthrough. Over the years, the share price has fallen from more than 30 euros to around 2.2 euros now, and this is the objective response of the market to the situation of TOMTOM. The M&A consultant's words pierced Gerrard's heart like a needle, but Gerrard was powerless to refute it.

Because all of this is a true reflection of the current situation of TOMTOM.