Chapter 196 Bigwigs

According to estimates, if the sale of NetEase stock goes smoothly, they can recover more than US$200 million from these 4.3 million shares of NetEase stock.

Barron has reached an agreement with Goldman Sachs for the remaining funds, which can be solved by mortgaging his shares in Sinclair Group and part of Apple shares.

During his time in Silicon Valley, in addition to completing the acquisition of Google shares, Barron also established the North American branch of Woaw with the help of Sequoia Capital.

The main task of Woaw's North American branch is to be responsible for the operation of the Woaw website in North America. To this end, they will also build a data center here - because of US policy, the data of North American users must remain locally, so this data center is necessary for the development of the North American market.

This is also the advice given by Sequoia Capital, which has rich experience in the Internet, to Woaw to prepare for a rainy day. After all, when their scale grows to a certain extent, even if Woaw is a British company and a "close ally" of the United States, it will still inevitably be "attacked" by relevant American departments.

It's the same principle as companies like Google and Microsoft, which are also subject to various restrictions in Europe.

At the same time, Woaw's North American branch will also establish a research and development center in Silicon Valley to study some new technologies for the future development of the Internet.

…

"This is Mr. Larry Fink of BlackRock, one of the fastest growing wealth management companies in the past 20 years."

"Hello, Mr. Fink, nice to meet you."

Introduced by Goldman Sachs Group President Paulson, Baron had a pleasant conversation with the founder and CEO of BlackRock Group.

Barron's BlackRock Group was a well-known company in his previous life. It was originally a fund management department under Blackstone. After more than 30 years of development by Larry Fink, when he was reborn, it had become a top wealth management company managing more than 10 trillion US dollars in assets.

However, at this time, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 had not yet occurred, and Goldman Sachs' "invincible record" had not been broken, and BlackRock had not yet developed to its later scale. Therefore, Larry Fink still showed enough respect in front of Paulson.

It was because of the gathering organized by Goldman Sachs that so many "big shots" were invited today. So far, Barron has met powerful figures including the president of Bridgewater Fund, the president of Sands Group, and the second generation of the Amway family.

So far, the scale of cooperation between Barron and Goldman Sachs has reached billions of dollars, making him a "big client" that Goldman Sachs cannot ignore. That is why Goldman Sachs' president, Paulson, took some time out tonight to accompany Barron and introduce these people to him.

It was only recently that Barron purchased large quantities of Apple and Google stocks that made him somewhat famous among these people. His previous investments in the United States were nothing more than small matters in the eyes of these people.

Even so, the scale of assets currently managed by DS Capital is still not ranked high in the eyes of those fund companies.

After all, the Mars Fund's fund management scale has just exceeded 1 billion pounds at this time, and when the BlackRock Group was first established, the fund management department separated from Blackstone had a fund scale of up to 1 billion US dollars...

"Hello, Mr. Blankfein, it's nice to see you here."

Lloyd Blankfein was a little surprised to see Barron take the initiative to greet him. After all, at that time, he was just the head of the Fixed Income Commodities Department (FICC) of Goldman Sachs Group. The reason he was able to attend this party was because FICC had achieved brilliant results in the past two years. It can be said that it has gradually become an important part of Goldman Sachs' revenue.

"Hello, Duke Cavendish, it's an honor to meet you. Your recent investment is very bold."

"Don't be so polite, Mr. Blankfein. Just call me Barron. I've heard of you before. They say you are the most capable person at Goldman Sachs."

Lloyd was very pleased with Baron's praise, but his words were not wrong, otherwise Lloyd Blankfein would not have become the first and only employee to join the board of directors of Goldman Sachs after its listing at the beginning of this year.

The reason why Barron deliberately wanted to be close to Lloyd was because he knew that the current Goldman Sachs Group President Paulson was about to retire. Before that, Paulson had two recognized successors, but Lloyd Blankfein was not one of them.

But because of the outstanding performance of the fixed income department he was in charge of - the revenue of the department headed by Lloyd increased from US$2.86 billion in 1999 to US$5.59 billion in 2003, becoming a pillar department of Goldman Sachs - in December of this year, after Paulson retired, Lloyd Blankfein took over as president and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, becoming the most powerful person in this financial empire.

While Lloyd has not yet reached that position, Barron is also happy to get closer to him.

Not only did Barron have such an idea, Lloyd also responded very proactively to the goodwill that Barron took the initiative to show.

After all, John Thornton, one of his competitors for "reaching the top" of Goldman Sachs, had the main achievement of successfully expanding Goldman Sachs' business into the European and Asian markets.

In Goldman Sachs' European market, cooperation with Barron's in England is also a very important project.

Lloyd naturally hopes to deepen his friendship with Baron, an important partner of Goldman Sachs' European business.

In addition to these, at this party, Barron also met some people who were quite interested in his Mars Fund, including Anderson, the owner of Sands Group, and Steve Van Andel of the Amway family.

Although the scale of the fund is far different from that of behemoths such as Blackstone, Bridgewater and even BlackRock, the performance of the Mars Fund in the past year has been very impressive - after all, the larger the scale of the fund, the more difficult it is to maintain a high rate of return. Those fixed-income funds have the largest total amount of funds, and the annual rate of return of these funds will not even exceed 10%!

But similarly, for Anderson and Steve, putting part of the funds in a "small" fund with high returns like the Mars Fund is also part of their asset allocation.

Especially for Anderson, who has plenty of money...

Of course, at this time they were just getting to know each other for the first time, and it was far from the time to finalize the cooperation.

However, Barron did gain a lot from this gathering. At least the many contacts he made will be very useful for his future development in America.