Chapter 540: Purchase Price of 8.6 Billion Pounds

"It fits very well and looks very handsome."

Bonnie looked at her husband in front of her, wearing a dark blue velvet robe and a black hat with feathers, and said to him with a smile on her face.

Her son George in her arms was babbling and reaching out to grab the feathers on the hat.

Barron was wearing the Garter robe for the Garter Parade to be held in the middle of next month.

His Garter robe, which had just been delivered, was specially tailored, so he tried it on.

At the end of last year, the Queen announced that Barron would be awarded the "Order of the Garter", which means that he has become a member of the Garter Knights, whose living members are limited to 25 people (excluding royal family members and foreign monarchs).

On Garter Day next month, he will participate in the parade with the Garter Knights and be formally awarded.

Barron and Bonnie's son George just celebrated his first birthday last month. He took his son from his wife, held him in his arms, and let his son grab the ostrich and heron feathers on his hat with his little hands to play...

When Barron accompanied his wife and children, went downstairs and got in the car to go to the company, Wang Wanting beside him said:

"Your Highness, today the British Competition and Markets Authority said that if Thomson Group wants to acquire Reuters Group, it needs to pass their antitrust review. In addition, the Antitrust Bureau of the US Department of Justice also said yesterday that the merger of Thomson Group and Reuters Group is suspected of monopoly..."

Yes, just after SEM Group continued to increase its holdings in Reuters Group to more than 30%, it was reported that Thomson Group began to offer Reuters Group, hoping to negotiate with the other party to acquire Reuters Group.

I believe Thomson also got the news of SEM Group's related actions, and thus started substantive actions.

It can be said that Thomson Group is coming with great momentum. They are preparing to acquire Reuters Group in the form of cash and stock, most of which is cash. According to the current stock price, the total acquisition offer is as high as 8.6 billion pounds, which is more than 40% higher than the current market value of Reuters Group.

Of course, after the news of this acquisition came out, SEM Group had first sought to acquire Reuters Group, and SEM Group's offer was also very considerable, so the stock price of Reuters Group rose.

According to the Thomson acquisition conditions currently revealed, each share of Reuters will receive 3.525 pounds in cash and 0.16 shares of Thomson stock. Calculated based on the closing price of the previous trading day, their total acquisition price for each share of Reuters Group is 6.86 pounds.

And from the information that Barron's assistant Wang Wanting just gave him, it can be seen that after the stock market opened today, Thomson's stock price was 45.77 Canadian dollars, 1.46 Canadian dollars lower than the closing price of the previous trading day, and its market value is about 29.5 billion Canadian dollars.

The share price of Reuters Group rose to a nearly five-year high of 6.59 pounds at the beginning of the trading session, and then closed at 6.3 pounds, which is far lower than the proposed acquisition price.

Of course, it does not mean that after the other party proposes an acquisition price, the share price of the acquired company will immediately rise to the corresponding share price of the acquisition price. The market also needs to judge whether the acquisition is successful. Otherwise, the investors who take over at a high price will face the failure of the acquisition, and the stock price will fall back, which will definitely result in a huge loss.

In fact, after the announcement of an acquisition intention, the rise in the share price of the acquired company can also show the market's optimism about the acquisition.

Just like this time, the share price of Reuters Group, under the premise of Thomson's acquisition price of 8.6 billion pounds, after the stock price rose, there was still a certain gap from the share price corresponding to the acquisition price, which also shows that the market is worried that this transaction, including the competition of SEM Group, may cause the whole process to last for a long time and may face investigation by competition regulators.

As Credit Suisse analysts said in a report: "We expect regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom to scrutinize carefully."

The Thomson family is the 10th richest family in the world. David Thomson, who is now the chairman of the Thomson Group, is the richest man in Canada and the eldest grandson of Roy Thomson, the founder of the Thomson Group.

Currently, the family owns 70% of the shares of the Thomson Group through its Woodbridge Holdings.

In fact, speaking of the Thomson family, it is not that they have no relationship with SEM Group, another competitor of their bid for Reuters Group...

Before the 1980s, the Thomson family once owned well-known media such as The Times in the UK and had the largest local newspaper circulation.

In 1981, the then chairman Ken Ness Thomson (son of the family founder Roy Thomson) decided to sell his The Times and The Sunday Times to Murdoch's News Corporation.

The latter continued its media layout in the UK through acquisitions and gradually developed the media empire of News Corporation.

The former gradually faded out of the paper media industry in the following 15 years and turned to electronic data products in the fields of finance, law, and medicine. Although these products did not seem very eye-catching at the time, they brought huge profits to Thomson, and Ken Thomson was widely praised for this strategic vision.

Then not long ago, News Corporation sold The Times and The Sunday Times to SEM Group, which then launched an acquisition of Reuters Group...

After Ken Thomson died a few years ago, his son David Thomson inherited the family business and began to turn his strategic focus back to England, to Reuters Group, which has a longer history and was the first in Europe to report the assassination of former US President Lincoln in 1865.

Speaking of which, although SEM Group has now acquired more than 30% of Reuters Group's shares, Barron is still not sure of winning if he competes head-on with Thomson Group.

First of all, when they increased their holdings in Reuters Group's shares, they already understood that this method would at most prevent them from getting nothing - even if the competition failed, at least they could get a premium from Thomson Group's acquisition of Reuters Group...

Because of the "golden shares" in the hands of Reuters Founders' Stock Company, the other party can fully require SEM Group to reduce its holdings to less than 15% in the future and prevent SEM Group from controlling Reuters Group.

Moreover, in fact, SEM Group does not have an advantage in terms of competition alone.

First, in terms of synergy after the merger, according to data from Inside Market Data, the current global data business market size is about 12.5 billion US dollars, of which Thomson Group has a market share of 11%, ranking third. After merging with Reuters Group, its market share can reach 34%, slightly ahead of Bloomberg, which has a market share of 33%, thus surpassing it and becoming the leader.

And if this transaction is completed, it can also combine Reuters Group's advantages in sales and trading with Thomson's fund manager and investment bank customer base, and integrate the two companies' respective market advantages in North America and Europe.

According to analysis, it is expected that after the merger of the two companies, the synergy generated by the merger will save more than 500 million US dollars in costs each year.

For this reason, Numis Securities analysts said in a research report: "Although the possibility of competitive acquisitions including SEM Group cannot be ruled out, given the scale of synergies generated by this acquisition offer...we believe that Thomson Group is the best acquirer of Reuters Group."