Rebirth of England.

Chapter 627 Friendship Insurance
Friends Provident Group was founded in 1832 and has a history of 176 years.

It is the first company in the UK to provide life insurance and other related products to private customers and is currently the fifth largest life insurance company in the UK.

It manages funds worth over £1000 billion, employs over 3900 people and manages over three million policies and bills for clients around the world.

In fact, two years ago, the Friendship Group was the second largest life insurance company in the UK. However, due to the subprime mortgage crisis, the Friendship Group's investment losses widened. In addition, due to this, the sales of Friendship Insurance's group pension funds and protective products dropped sharply, resulting in the inability to retain more funds, so its scale has sharply decreased.

Just look at the revenue data of Friendship Insurance Group and you will know that in 2006, they were able to make a profit of 3.28 million pounds, but last year, Friendship Insurance Group announced a loss of 5600 million pounds!
As a result, this year, just so far, Youcheng Group's losses in the first three quarters have reached 3.3 million pounds, and its full-year losses are expected to exceed 4.5 million pounds.

This can be called a straight drop...

According to the information Barron received, as an insurance company, Friendship Insurance Group did not have any problems, but the key was their investment in the insurance money...

As we all know, an important way for insurance companies to make profits is to collect premiums from users, then use these funds for investment, and ultimately obtain the difference in returns.

But the problem is that Youcheng Group’s investment is really hard to describe - also because of Youcheng Group’s huge losses, its shareholders are also putting pressure on the company’s management to sell the company.

Previously, DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust) contacted the Friends Insurance Group, and Amber Sheehan, at the instruction of Barron, offered a price of US$23.5 billion, hoping to acquire the company.

However, although DS Holdings' all-cash acquisition proposal is very attractive to the shareholders of Youcheng Insurance Group, the company's continued losses, which are getting bigger and bigger, have made these shareholders desperate and they hope to sell their shares.

But in the end, Youcheng Group rejected DS Holdings' bid on the grounds that the bid was "too low". You know, although the current market value of Youcheng Group is around 22 billion US dollars, they still believe that this is mainly due to the recent negative news that triggered the sell-off, and the actual value of Youcheng Insurance Group is higher than this figure...

In fact, DS Holdings also thought so after analyzing the situation of Youcheng Insurance Group. However, since they failed to find a bargain, they continued to negotiate with Youcheng Insurance Group and prepared to increase the acquisition price...

……

“I saw that SEM Group bought ELLE?”

"Yes, babe, are you interested in these magazines?"

Bonnie gently stirred the coffee, took a sip, and said with a smile:

"Not bad. I often watch these. And Zhukova told me a while ago that she was going to buy "POP" to try it out..."

In the end, SEM Group successfully defeated Hearst Group with a price of 15 billion euros and purchased Hachette Group as a whole from Lagardere Vitality Media Group, making this media group, whose main business is fashion magazines, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SEM Group.

As for Zhukova, she is already married to Abramovich. Barron remembers that in the original time and space, she did acquire a fashion magazine targeting young people and achieved success after the revamp.

"Why, is she still planning to convince you to do this together?"

"That's not the case. After I rejected her last time, Zhukova only occasionally got some advice from me..."

Bonnie says:

"But I heard that she is contacting some friends in the fashion industry, including the former editor-in-chief of French Vogue, hoping that he will join her magazine."

In the past two years, Zhukova has indeed done some things, such as launching a fashion brand Kova & T with her childhood friend, Christina Tang, a girl from Hong Kong, China. The brand name comes from the abbreviation of her and her childhood friend's surnames. In addition, she also founded an art and creative center in Russia, but these can only be said to have made some noise, far from being successful.

"Although I think Zhukova is slightly more reliable in business than Victoria, I still suggest that you find something interesting to do in SEM Group..."

"Okay, but let's wait until Richard is older. I can only go to the company occasionally lately."

Although Bonnie had more experience with their second child, Richard, than when she had just given birth to George.

But after all, the child is still too young. Even with the maids helping to take care of her, Bonnie still needs time with her.

Therefore, as a director of SEM Group, she has not spent much time in the company recently.

Barron's birthday has always been very low-key. He spent his 28th birthday in the company of his wife and children.

Well, he didn’t hold a birthday party this year, and he didn’t even invite some of the people he was close to. Perhaps as he got older, he was no longer keen on such things.

He has been in this world for six years. If his previous life is included, Barron's mental age is already over forty years old...

"I have found those people, Your Highness."

In Barron's study, Mikhail Ritter, dressed in black, sat in the shadow of the lamp, seeming to merge with the shadow.

As Barron's guardian in the dark, Mikhail will not only provide him with a secret security team in addition to his public bodyguards, but will also be responsible for doing some things for Barron... that need to be done under the table.

This time, Mikhail was one step ahead of the London police and found the perpetrator of the burglary that Joe Harriman had encountered.

"I was dealing with it from the point of sale. The jewellery was being sold clandestinely in East London from another family in the same neighbourhood who had been robbed on the same day as Ms Harriman..."

Following this clue, Mikhail sent people to lock down a theft team and control them...

As for whether this is illegal detention?

Rest assured, the London police won't even know about these things.

"It has been basically confirmed that among the people they stole was Ms. Joe Harriman, and the stolen goods are still in their hands. I have found the stolen goods from the place where they hid them..."

"I need to know if this is just a random theft or not an operation with other purposes."

Hearing Barron's words, Mikhail nodded:
"I will confirm this matter again, Your Highness."

I believe that given how “well-behaved” those people are at this moment, they will tell the truth.

After all, back then on Sonaland Island in Cyprus, Mikhail had a lot of experience in how to make people "well-behaved".

(End of this chapter)