Rebirth of England.

Chapter 599 The King Behind the Scenes
Obviously, Barron has long had an idea for Costco. By acquiring this company, Argos Retail Group will be able to extend its reach into the North American market, the home base of its competitor Amazon.

In addition, Costco also has many stores in Asia and the Chinese market, but the stores in the Chinese market are mainly in the Bay Area - Costco stores in the Bay Area can be said to be one of the most profitable stores in the world.

Costco entered mainland China very late and did not open a store in Shanghai until 2019. At that time, the store was extremely popular when it opened, which also left a deep impression on Barron.

The advantage of acquiring Costco is that the company does not have a controlling shareholder. Therefore, when making an acquisition, Barron only needs to ensure that he holds enough shares and obtain the approval of the company's board of directors. He does not need to acquire companies such as Hermès. Likewise, you need to "battle" with the family or group that controls the company.

Similarly, the downside is that it has no controlling shareholder - nearly 70% of Costco's shares are held by institutions, among which The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street, Geode Capital Management, FMR LLC and other institutions with the highest shareholding ratios hold a total of nearly 30% of the company's shares.

Therefore, while Barrons needs to absorb Costco shares from retail investors in the secondary market, he also needs to deal with some of these institutions to buy their Costco shares.

Costco's stock price is currently trading at $70, a 32% increase compared to the same period last year.

However, it will still be affected by the subprime mortgage crisis. Within this year, Costco's stock price will drop to a minimum of about US$40. Therefore, taking advantage of this general trend, Barron's can also absorb a certain proportion of good prices through the secondary market. Many stocks.

And for some institutions, as the subprime mortgage crisis gradually broke out, many of the assets they held were affected, and many of them required funds to remediate.

Under such circumstances, it would not be too difficult to persuade them to sell their Costco shares.

From now on, the funds under Barron's name have begun to absorb Costco stocks. This will be a relatively long process to slowly achieve a controlling stake.

Specifically, Costco is the largest membership chain warehouse retailer in the United States. Their business methods are still very different from the previous stores of Argos Retail Group.

But in terms of comprehensive investment income and help to Argos' business, Costco can be said to be one of their best acquisition targets.

After all, as we all know, the retail industry in the North American market is highly competitive, and several of the world's largest retail companies are located in North America.

Argos's model is suitable for Europe, but it may not be suitable for North America, let alone Asia - in the original time and space, Argos' e-commerce exploration into the Chinese market ended in failure.

If Argos Retail Group wants to enter the North American market and develop from scratch, it will definitely be very difficult and it will face huge competition - and in the e-commerce field, it also needs to face the pressure of Amazon.

The best option is to expand the market by acquiring Costco, and then use Costco's channels to supplement its e-commerce sector.

Of course, this is something that needs to be considered later.

……

"Congratulations, Mr. Guanhai, I hope you can win the final victory in this election."

"Thank you for your support, Your Highness the Duke."

During this period, Barron also took the time to meet privately with Ao Guanhai.

This year is an election year in the United States, and in early June, Ao Guanhai became the candidate of the Donkey Party in the intra-party election of the Donkey Party.

In this internal election of the Donkey Party, Ao Guanhai's biggest opponent is Hillary, the wife of former leader Zipperton.

In this intra-party election, Ao Guanhai received 1762 votes for party representatives and 394 super electoral votes, for a total of 2156 votes.

Hillary received 1637 party delegates and 283 super electoral votes, for a total of 1920 votes.

According to the rules, it takes 2118 votes to win the Democratic Party nomination, so Hillary had no choice but to admit defeat and choose to withdraw from the election. However, O'Kane received enough votes and was finally determined to be the Democratic Party's candidate.

It is also worth mentioning that the candidates competing for the Donkey Party this time also include Barron’s previous life before his rebirth. However, he and the other four candidates were already behind the Olympics in January this year. Guan Hai and Hillary chose to withdraw from the competition.

In this election, because George W. Bush has been re-elected for two terms, Ao Guanhai's opponent, the candidate of the Elephant Party, was already identified as Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain in March this year.

As mentioned before, the country's economic situation during and before the election will have a great impact on the election results.

Because of the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis, the public has a lot of complaints against the currently in office Xiang Party. Therefore, judging from some current survey data in this election, the situation of the Donkey Party is still relatively optimistic.

In this meeting between Barron and Ao Guanhai, it can be seen from the other party's face that he is still very confident about the upcoming election.

Of course, after Ao Guanhai takes office, he will have to worry about the subprime mortgage crisis...

Ao Guanhai's affection for Barron is not only because Barron has provided him with a large amount of funding through certain channels, but also because the media that Barron can influence, including the Sinclair Group, have a strong influence on Ao Guanhai. In this campaign, it is also a very important voice channel.

In addition to Ao Guanhai, Barron also took advantage of this opportunity to meet with many people, including some Wall Street capital.

For example, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

JPMorgan Chase has just acquired the bankrupt Bear Stearns, and it can be said that it has made some gains in this subprime mortgage crisis. This is not only the expansion of JPMorgan Chase's scale, but also the execution of their self-proclaimed responsibility to "rescue the economy."

Judging from the name JPMorgan Chase, this one of the Wall Street giants is related to the Morgan family.

In fact, there are now two Wall Street giants named "Morgan", namely Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. These two companies are often called "Big Morgan" and "Little Morgan".

Their appearance can be traced back to nearly 80 years ago, and this is also related to the famous "Titanic"...

If anyone has ever become the king of America, the Morgan family is one of the most qualified candidates.

At the beginning of the 38th century, the financial capital directly controlled by the Morgan family accounted for 200% of the financial capital in the United States, with a total value of nearly 125 billion U.S. dollars. There was also an insurance asset of 65 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for % of the U.S. insurance industry.

They once led the feat of saving the American economy——

In October 1907, the New York Stock Exchange's stock price fell by 10% year-on-year, and there were many runs on banks and trust companies.

As a large number of state and local banks and businesses failed, panic spread throughout the country and became known as the Panic of 1907.

At that time, the United States had not yet established a central banking system and could not effectively intervene in the market.

J.P. Morgan, the leader of the Morgan family, came to the rescue and quickly summoned executives from major banks and trusts to form a joint consortium with major families, including Rockefeller, to be responsible for allocating inter-bank capital flows into the market to sweep away goods, effectively restraining the stock price from plummeting.

With the strong intervention of several family consortiums led by Morgan, the Great Depression ended in less than a month.

However, the American government also began to realize that private consortiums were too powerful and began to gradually curb large families.

This paved the way for the birth of the Federal Reserve five years later...

(End of this chapter)