Chapter 349: Interception

To put it bluntly, occasions like the New Year's Eve dinner at the White House are similar to the parties Barron attended in London before.

  It's just that the whole process is more "American", with reserved programs including talk shows and singing by singers. After the banquet begins, it's time for everyone to exchange "feelings" with each other.

  They are nothing more than guests invited to the White House dinner. In addition to the most well-known figures in various industries, the capital tycoons all have greater influence.

  For example, supporters behind the Republican Party, such as the Koch family, the Amway family, and Bridgewater Fund, all appeared at the dinner, and Barron also communicated with them.

  Most of these capitals have no conflicts with Barron's industries, and the Amway family, for example, has invested in DS Capital's Mars Fund, so the atmosphere between them is pretty good.

  …

  "I thought you had forgotten me..."

  After attending the New Year's Eve dinner at the White House, Barron took the time to meet with Ivanta again, but it seemed that Ivanta still had some feelings for Barron.

  But when Barron saw the photo of Barron and Bonnie printed on the newspaper in the room - it was the report of the two attending the White House New Year's Eve dinner that day, he understood why.

  When a woman is jealous, no matter how much you coax her verbally, it is better to do something practical...

  Therefore, Barron did not say anything and dragged this young lady to learn various knowledge...

  As for the effect, it was immediate. After replenishing a lot of knowledge in the study, Ivanta's little emotion finally subsided.

  But she still said with some dissatisfaction:

  "Is our company just investing in MySpace and doing nothing else?"

  "Of course not, baby, be patient, didn't I ask you to do your research before?"

  This year... uh, last year in 2004, Ivanta finally graduated from the Wharton School of Business with a bachelor's degree in management, so now she has more time.

  After she graduated, she called Barron several times to inquire about IC Capital's next investment direction. It seemed that she had exhausted her patience - Barron had not asked her about this since he had invested $10 million to acquire 40% of MySpace's shares. No wonder she was a little anxious.

  However, Barron was busy with a series of acquisitions at the time and was not in a hurry to use IC Capital for investment. He asked Ivanta to use this time to investigate American Internet companies. On the one hand, he wanted to familiarize himself with the situation in this area. If he wanted to make good investments, he must first have a deeper understanding of the industry he was investing in. Even though Ivanta was mainly an executor of Barron in IC Capital, she had to have some understanding of the Internet industry in order to give people a sense of trust when communicating with the founders of those companies.

  In addition, Barron was actually engaged in the financial investment industry in his previous life. Although he had some understanding of the mergers and acquisitions of some Internet companies, he could not have a clear overview at that time. Therefore, he hoped that Ivanta's survey could inspire his "inspiration" and make him "familiar" with some of the start-ups at that time and make investments accordingly.

  After hearing what Barron said, Ivanta no longer cared about her "exposing her private parts". She got up from the bed, took out a document from her bag and handed it to Barron. It seemed that she was well prepared this time:

  "I sent you the previous survey results by email. These are the data of some projects that I have screened again recently."

  Barron flipped through the information that Ivanta handed over, and he actually found a company worth investing in...

  However, it is not a startup, but a relatively "old" company.

  In fact, Barron's original plan was to wait until February of this year to see if YouTube would be created like in the original time and space, and then IC Capital could invest in it…

  But now that Ivanta is getting a little impatient, this company is more suitable.

  Turning to look at Ivanta's expectant eyes, Barron smiled and said to Ivanta:  

  "Next, help me collect information about this company, including the changes in their stock price in recent years, the holdings of each shareholder, and the proportion of circulating shares that can be purchased in the secondary market..."

  As Barron spoke, Ivanta's eyes fell on where his finger was and saw the company he mentioned - DoubleClick.

  The reason why Barron has an impression of this company is that he remembers that in 2007 in the original time and space, Google acquired DoubleClick for US$3.24 billion.

  Before that, DoubleClick was acquired by two investment companies, Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity and Management, at a premium of nearly 50%, or $1.1 billion, at the end of April this year.

  Of course, when their acquisition was completed, the price of US$1.1 billion was a premium of more than 10% compared to the average price of the company in the previous 30 trading days.

  Therefore, according to this calculation, these two companies should have started the acquisition of DoubleClick in March, so if they want to acquire this company, they should start preparing for action now.

  Baron wanted to acquire DoubleClick not just to sell it to Google at a high price later, at least that was not the main reason.

  It is because of this company that it will also be helpful for the future development of Woaw Technology.

  Founded in 1996, DoubleClick is an online advertising service provider that mainly engages in online advertising management software development and advertising services, and centrally plans, executes, monitors and tracks online advertising activities.

  They currently have more than 500 corporate clients, which can be said to be a very strong company in the Internet advertising industry in the United States at this time. The reason why Google was willing to pay a sky-high price of US$3.24 billion to acquire this company in the future was that they valued their supplement to Google's Internet advertising revenue. At that time, their acquisition was protested by Microsoft, Yahoo and other companies, and the acquisition was completed only after passing the antitrust investigations of the United States and the European Union.

  Well, speaking of Yahoo, I have to say that this company is indeed a negative example in terms of corporate acquisitions. In the original time and space, it is well known that it missed the acquisition of Google and Facebook. In fact, DoubleClick is also one of Yahoo's victims...

  In 1996, DoubleClick negotiated with Yahoo, hoping to sell the company to the other party for $1 million...

  But Yahoo, which was at its peak at the time, was only willing to offer $950,000 and took a tough attitude and refused to make concessions.

  So this "selling out" ended in failure...

  Then, DoubleClick successfully went public in 1998. In 2000, when the Internet bubble was at its peak, the company's market value once exceeded 10 billion US dollars!

  Good guy, you can only give Yahoo a 666...

  However, although DoubleClick had such a glorious past, after the Internet stock crash in March 2000, in August 2002, DoubleClick's market value fell by more than 95%, and at its lowest point it was only about US$350 million.

  According to the information provided by Ivanta, DoubleClick's market value is around US$700 million at this time. However, on the whole, the company's advertising business revenue is also recovering after the Internet bubble.

  This is also why, when the acquisition team led by Hellman & Friedman initially wanted to acquire DoubleClick, the founder of this company went to lobby the board of directors, hoping to reject the other party's acquisition, because the other party saw that their market value was underestimated compared to the prospects of Internet advertising.

  Only when the other party's bid was raised to $1.1 billion did they finally convince DoubleClick's board of directors to agree to the acquisition...

  Now, what Barron is going to do is to use IC Capital to complete the acquisition of DoubleClick first.

  Previously, his several offshore companies had nearly US$8.2 billion in funds, of which US$8 billion was invested in the Caesar Fund and US$200 million would be invested in IC Capital to buy the company's shares in the secondary market in advance and seek opportunities to acquire shares of other shareholders.