Chapter 907: Pushed Into The Abyss
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
After all, Samsung was an old company that deeply tied up the economy of Korea. It had the backing of Wall Street and five tycoons beside it. Plus, it also had a huge amount of cash in its hands.
Other than the abundance of cash, there was nothing else that Jiadian Group could compare to.
In fact, if Samsung was driven into a corner, Korea could have come forward and set up Samsung Law like the Volkswagen Law, preventing Samsung from being acquired.
At this level of a company, it was no longer just an economic problem. There were many political factors that had to be considered.
So... Unless Su Yang had Mr. Yoon, Wall Street, and the other major corporations on his side, it was almost impossible for him to acquire them.
At the same time, in Korea, many people were panicking because of Su Yang’s aggressive acquisition of Samsung.
In the office of the president of the country, Mr. Yoon was listening to his advisor’s report.
When Mr. Yoon heard his advisor’s report about the conflict between Su Yang and Samsung, he frowned.
Even with his intellect, he could not understand Su Yang’s actions.
‘Why on Earth would Su Yang dare to do all this without any thought for the consequences?
‘Does he really believe that I would help him?
‘Could someone with a net worth of 100 billion yuan be so naive?’
After thinking for a while, he could not come up with an answer. Hence, Mr. Yoon waved for his advisor to leave before he picked up a phone and called someone he knew.
The call connected, and the man said in a hoarse voice, “Do you not understand what’s happening right now?”
Mr. Yoon nodded. “I don’t understand indeed. What is Su Yang doing?”
The man was silent for a while. “To be honest, I don’t understand it either. I have a feeling that he has a backup plan, but I don’t know what it is.”
The man paused and asked, “Are you going to help him then?”
The usually calm Mr. Yoon sounded a little angry. “Help him? That’s impossible!
“Samsung’s N7 bombing incident would be such a perfect entry point!
“However, it’s precisely because he’s casually made such a move that the situation instantly blew up. In fact, not even I dare use this as an excuse.”
Mr. Yoon took a deep breath and said, “After all, compared to Samsung, I’m more afraid of an outsider like him!
“Even though I want to ruin Samsung, I don’t want him to take over!
“Therefore, I will only wait for now and observe the changes. If necessary, I will help Samsung.”
At this point, Mr. Yoon laughed self-deprecatingly. “To think that before I took office, I was determined to wipe out Korea’s corporation and let the people live in a free country. I didn’t expect that I would have to end up helping Samsung instead. What a joke!”
The person on the other end of the phone sighed and said, “The world is unpredictable. No one can say what’s going to happen for sure.”
“Let’s call each other more often for now. I’ll let you know if there are any changes.”
Mr. Yoon hummed and said, “Thank you.”
The person on the other end said, “We’re doing all of this for our country.”
Mr. Yoon said solemnly, “For our country.”
...
On the other hand, in Samsung’s president office, Lee Jaerong was no longer calm.
‘Jiadian Group is coming at me really aggressively and much faster than I had expected.
‘He’s held 5% of the shares on the first day, 10% on the second day, and 15% on the sixth day. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before Samsung is no longer under my control.
‘Even though I don’t know what kind of tactics Jiadian Group has used, I’ve done some intensive research on Su Yang. I know that other than his setback in Korea, he’s been winning all of his battles before that.
‘Coupled with the fact that he’s come to Korea with such an intimidating presence, he’s definitely not one to be underestimated.
‘I must make my move.’
With that in mind, he picked up the phone and called the presidents of the major banks and investment banks in Wall Street.
On the phone, Lee Jaerong once again explained the urgency of the situation. He also said that Su Yang might have other hidden shares in his hands, but had not been announced yet. This was considered a violation of the rules in the various exchange centers.
Therefore, Lee Jaerong came up with two conditions.
The first was to ask Wall Street to put pressure on the securities trade centers across the world to issue a letter requesting Jiadian Group to disclose details of the acquisition of shares and determine if there were any violations.
The second was for Wall Street to invest in the secondary market (that is, the stock market) to buy Samsung’s shares, which would increase pressure on Jiadian Group’s acquisition. It would also prevent Jiadian Group’s excessive shareholding from affecting the management of the company.
After hearing Lee Jaerong’s conditions, the banks and investment banks in Wall Street, which held Samsung’s shares, said they agreed to the first condition in principle.
However, the second condition was that the shares were not cheap. With the company’s current business, whether Samsung would gain more benefits was something that needed to be carefully studied. It was not something that could be decided on a whim.
Furthermore, even if they agreed to increase the price, based on Samsung’s market value, it would take at least 10 billion USD to get off the market. This amount of money was not something that could be withdrawn in a short time.
Therefore, they had to confirm the plan before giving Lee Jaerong an answer.
After hearing Wall Street’s answer, Lee Jaerong had no choice but to accept it.
However, after hanging up, he suddenly thought of a solution.
‘It would indeed be difficult to come up with such a huge amount of money within a short time.
‘However... It seems like both Hyundai and myself just so happen to have that amount of money.
‘If possible, could I ask the five consortiums to help me purchase my own company’s stocks?
‘Since Su Yang’s massacre of Samsung’s shares is mainly in America and London, could I distribute more shares in Korea to dilute Su Yang’s shares?’
With this idea in mind, Lee Jaerong immediately invited the five consortiums for another meeting.
Due to the dire situation that Samsung was facing and Su Yang’s aggressive attack, the five consortiums had formed a tight group recently. Therefore, when Lee Jaerong summoned them, they immediately rushed over.
Compared to the previous gathering, this one was much more casual. It was not as crowded as the business meeting last time, but it was extremely difficult to have a discussion at the time.
During the meeting, Lee Jaerong hoped each family would take out 5 billion USD to buy Samsung’s shares on the Korea stock market.
5 billion USD from each of the remaining consortiums would add up to 20 billion USD. Meanwhile, Samsung would also add 20 billion USD of stocks as well.
In that case, Su Yang’s 15% shares would be diluted to 12.5%.
Of course, the four other consortiums were not doing this without any profit. Lee Jaerong promised that after this matter was over, Samsung would buy back this portion of shares at a premium of 10%. They could also buy the shares of each of the four consortiums for 5 billion USD, allowing the few families to distribute the shares together.
Lee Jaerong’s plan moved the four major corporations. After the other four corporations went back and did some research, they signed contracts with Samsung.
Of course, this type of contract had no legal effect. It was just meant as a backup.
Furthermore, if Lee Jaerong wanted to increase the share price, she needed to explain the situation to the major shareholders and go through the board meeting.
After all, this act of increasing shares might have diluted Su Yang’s shares, but it would also hurt the rights of the existing shareholders. They had to get the approval of the majority of the shareholders.
However, Lee Jaerong believed that with his reasonable persuasion, the shareholders would agree to this proposal.
In the next few days, Lee Jaerong started to run around the Korean Stock Exchange.
At the same time, Su Yang arrived at Samsung’s headquarters.
Upon arrival, Su Yang looked at the brightly lit building in front of him. Then, he focused his gaze. Samsung’s destiny line appeared once again. They were like a vast galaxy that pierced through heaven and earth.
The destiny line’s [Past] and [Present] were solid, but on one of its ends, which was its [Future], was semi-transparent.
Su Yang held onto the condensed end and checked what had happened recently.
Finally, he nodded silently and left Samsung.
Two days later, Jiadian Group and Tencent jointly announced that they would use a cash premium of 20 billion yuan to buy about 3.7% of the shares held in all of Tencent’s subsidiaries.
Therefore, this time, even if Jiadian Group did not raise their boards, the market knew that they were not far from the next one.
After signing the contract with the Tencent Group, Mr. Ma even gave Su Yang a call to express his apology. He said that he had let Su Yang down because of insufficient time, and the shares that he bought did not meet Su Yang’s requirements.
However, Su Yang merely consoled him. After all, letting Tencent buy 4% of shares was an ideal situation. The stock price changed every day, and the situation was constantly changing. No one could predict every step. Therefore, a small setback was normal.
Furthermore, Su Yang did not encounter any setbacks as he had already completed his initial plan.
Coupled with Tencent’s shares, Su Yang had 19.2% of Samsung’s shares.
All the subsidiaries owned more than 19% shares.
Other than that, the Hermes Fund had also taken advantage of the price fluctuation in Samsung’s share price to take in a large portion of the shares. They had about 1.5% of the shares.
In a sense, Su Yang could already raise his board for the fourth time.
However, he remained behind the scenes for the time being so that he did not agitate Samsung.
That was because what Su Yang wanted to do now was to force Samsung to its death whilst giving them a glimmer of hope. Ultimately, Su Yang wanted Samsung to... Bury themselves...
...
As expected, because Su Yang was getting more and more anxious, Samsung started to panic. Especially the shares transfer agreement with Tencent, which made the entire Samsung confused about Su Yang’s trump cards.
Therefore, they lobbied Qingwa Tower and requested targeted protection for Samsung while sending stock proposals to Korea.
Because of this plan, Lee Jaerong personally flew to America to talk to the presidents of several major banks and investment banks, asking for their support.
After all, even though this plan had lost some profits, it no longer needed the financial companies to pay for it. In some ways, this was a good way to solve the problem.
However, to Lee Jaerong’s surprise, the major banks holding Samsung’s shares were a little ambiguous in this plan. They did not express any obvious objection, but they did not support it either. They only said that they would consider it, and they hoped that Lee Jaerong would not rush into it.
Lee Jaerong did not want to be anxious, but the situation was urgent. If they did not act now, Su Yang would launch an all-out attack.
One had to know that as long as one held more than 30% of the shares of a listed company, they could be considered a shareholder. They could directly hold a shareholder meeting and change the board of directors.
The shareholders’ meeting was different from the board of directors. The board of directors calculated the number of votes according to the seats, and there would be a few votes for a few people. When it came to voting, every vote was equivalent.
But the shareholders’ meeting calculated the number of votes based on the share ratio. As long as the shareholders with more than 50% of the shares voted to change the board, the board would have to change.
On the other hand, if Su Yang had 30% of the shares, in addition to the Eroter Management and the largest pension fund in Europe, which had requested for the board of directors to reshuffle, as long as he could gain the support of a few other major shareholders, there was a high chance that he could get more than half of the shares.
Therefore, 30% was the critical line that Su Yang must not break through!
Under this kind of pressure, Lee Jaerong could only visit the president’s office at the major banks and investment banks every other day. Even though she did not say it explicitly, she used her actions to remind the other party to get through this plan as soon as possible.
However, things didn’t go the way Lee Jaerong expected. After three days of discussion, the major banks finally rejected Lee Jaerong’s proposal to increase the stock.
Several major banks and investment banks believed that the shares of the company would be diluted if the company increased its shares in Korea. The company’s contribution to the major banks would decrease and they would be making small profits.
This was a plan that would harm their own interests, and they would not accept it.
Of course, they also agreed to the terms. They asked Samsung to use the company’s funds to buy back the shares of Samsung and then increase the shares in Korea.
In this way, Samsung’s shares in America’s stock market would decrease, while their in the Korea stock market would increase. The total amount of shares would remain the same. Not only could it prevent Su Yang from snatching Smasung’s shares on America’s stock market, it could also prevent the interests of the existing shareholders from being affected.
Lee Jaerong, who had received replies from several major banks, went crazy!
Could he possibly still care about the loss of benefits at that point?!
Once Su Yang took over Samsung, he would collectively settle the scores and Lee Jaerong would have nothing left!
As for the plan to buy back shares in America’s stock market and then increase the shares in the Korea stock market, that was even more nonsensical!
To be sure, this plan is entirely feasible and logical.
But the problem was!
Their circumstances were special at that moment! How could Jiadian Group buy back the shares before giving them more time?
Especially since America’s stock market was Su Yang’s main battlefield. There was no way Lee Jaerong could snatch so many shares from him!
This was an impossible mission!
However, what Lee Jaerong did not know was that before he arrived in America, Zhao Licheng had brought Su Yang’s handwritten letter to visit a few major banks and investment banks and had a secret discussion with them...
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