Chapter 355 Digital Future

 "Mr. Aiser, I believe that our cooperation this time will be the beginning of friendship between the two sides."

  "I hope so, Your Highness. This is the first time we have purchased financial products from a British private investment company. We are also impressed by your strength in the investment field."

  This time, the person who came to London to meet Barron was Sven Esser, CEO of Norges Bank.

  After the investment agreement was signed, Barron shook hands with Sven Esser and said with a smile:

  "I won't let you down either."

  Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the investment management arm of Norwegian Bank, has been responsible for the international asset investment affairs of Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), one of the world's largest sovereign funds.

  This time, the investment agreement they signed was that NBIM, on behalf of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund, purchased up to US$1 billion of Caesars Fund's fixed income products.

  Currently, the size of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund is nearly US$1 trillion. Compared with this fund size, purchasing US$1 billion of Caesar Fund products does not seem to be high.

  But the significance of this is that, as Sven Esser said, this is their first time investing in the financial products of a British private investment company, so the $1 billion in funds can be seen as their "pathfinder". If the future cooperation between the two parties can satisfy them, they are likely to continue to make additional investments.

  Petter Friedman, CEO of Caesars Investments, had previously worked at NBIM, and this time the Norwegian Pension Fund Global's investment in Caesars Investments was mainly facilitated by him.

  The $1 billion fixed-rate financial product purchased by the Norwegian Global Pension Fund has a three-year term and an average annual return of 10%...

  According to statistics, at this time, government bonds account for more than 50% of the Norwegian Global Pension Fund's investments, and the rest include stocks, corporate bonds, real estate and other investments...

  Since the Norwegian Pension Fund Global began to participate in stock investment in 1998, until the end of last year, its average annualized return was around 6%, and its annualized net return was around 4%.

  Therefore, for Caesar Fund's investment, if the final return they get can reach an average annualized rate of 10% as promised, it will far exceed its average return in this sovereign fund's investment.

  The current Caesars Fund, in addition to the $8 billion invested by overseas offshore companies controlled by Barron, includes investments from local British capital, Middle Eastern capital, and European funds such as the Norwegian Global Pension Fund, and controls a total of $12 billion.

  After completing the acquisition of FTSE 500 Logistics at the end of January, they still had $7.5 billion in funds to use.

  Of course, these funds will not remain idle. Next, they will be used to acquire another company.

  However, before that, Caesar Fund invested in the establishment of a subsidiary, Digital Future Investment (DFI).

  On February 1, Digital Future made its first investment, investing $20 million in DailyVedio.com and holding a 40% stake in the video sharing website.

  DailyVedio.com was originally a website created by O2 Telecom when it collaborated with Digital UK to add entertainment services to its broadband business.

  At that time, O2 Telecom cooperated with Digital UK to provide home broadband packages for Freeview users. In order to expand the entertainment service categories for its broadband users, the two parties jointly launched a website that allows users to upload their own videos for free and share them publicly. That is DailyVedio.

  Prior to this, DailyVedio was jointly owned by O2 Telecom and Digital UK, each holding 50% of the shares.

  However, due to the previous problem of broadband transmission speed, DailyVedio can only allow users to upload videos of a certain size and length to avoid the network speed being too slow and affecting the viewing experience. Therefore, until now, although there are still many users using DailyVedio.com, and its total number of users has exceeded 2 million, its usage frequency is not high and there are not too many active users.

  For this reason, O2 Telecom and Digital UK do not pay much attention to DailyVedio. After all, it is obvious that the current broadband speed has great restrictions on this kind of video website, and DailyVedio itself is just a "free service" they provide to users. Even if some advertisements are added, its income is slightly better than nothing.

  You should know that the more users this kind of video website has, the more bandwidth and storage space it requires, and the higher the investment required.  

  Under the current circumstances, DailyVedio's two shareholders have no motivation to develop the website at all, they just want the service to exist.

  Although Barron knows the development potential of video websites in the future, at the current stage, the actual conditions are not conducive to the development of this category, so he has never made any mandatory requirements for this.

  However, it is now 2005, and BT is about to launch its "21st Century Network Plan", and O2 Telecom will also start their fiber optic plan. Next, the broadband speed will begin to increase significantly.

  And it was about the time when YouTube began to appear, so DailyVedio also had a window of opportunity to start developing.

  So at this time, Digital Future Investments, a subsidiary of Caesar Fund, began to make efforts. After investing 20 million US dollars in DailyVedio.com, it will start to open this website to the public based on DailyVedio, not limited to the previous O2 Telecom and Digital UK users.

  We will also organize some technical talents to develop related streaming media technologies so that DailyVedio can provide users with a better experience.

  After completing this investment, Digital Future will hold a 40% stake in DailyVedio. O2 Telecom and Digital UK will each hold a 30% stake, making Digital Future the company's largest shareholder.

  As can be seen from the name of Digital Future Investment Company, this investment company under Caesar Fund will mainly involve investments in computer technology and Internet companies.

  In addition to investing in DailyVedio.com, Digital Future also invested in buying an old warehouse in Shoreditch, East London, which was still a dilapidated urban area at the time. It plans to demolish it and build a new 15-story building - the Digital Future Building. After completion, it will be used to incubate DailyVedio and Digital Future's technology projects.

  At present, there is nothing much to see in this area of ​​Shoreditch in East London, but it will have a name in the future, called London Tech City.

  The East End of London is an area in the east of London, near the port. It was once a crowded slum area with narrow streets and densely packed houses, most of which were built in the mid-nineteenth century.

  During World War II, most of the city was destroyed by bombing and later rebuilt, with traditional industries such as clothing, shoemaking, furniture, printing, cigarettes, and food.

  The East End of London has historically been regarded as a slum. In Conan Doyle's writings, the most dangerous place in foggy London is the East End.

  This place is close to the dock, and most of the residents are poor laborers and immigrants. The famous "Jack the Ripper" once lived here.

  With the industrial transformation of London in the 1980s, many abandoned industrial buildings emerged. These old industrial-style buildings and low rents attracted many cash-strapped artists to work and live here, and it gradually became an important art district in London.

  Starting in 2000, the strong innovation atmosphere here and the much cheaper rent compared to the nearby old financial city attracted the first batch of programmers to settle in.

  They rent an office in the Old Street roundabout area, which will be the world's third largest science and technology industry cluster after Silicon Valley and New York in the future. It is the birthplace of London's Tech City, which brings together tens of thousands of high-tech companies and hundreds of thousands of technology elites from all over the world. It is also known as London's Silicon Roundabout.

  Barron's own goal is to at least own the "Facebook" of this world - Woaw, a global social platform, and other Internet projects, such as e-commerce, mobile payments, local life and other tracks, must at least hold the European market.

  But relatively speaking, from the development in the past, we can see that compared with America and Greater China, the development of the Internet in Europe lags far behind and does not have such a strong atmosphere.

  In this field, he certainly cannot fight alone. The entire Internet industry is needed to incubate more European Internet newcomers.

  Now, he is ready to devote himself to this incubation, and Digital Future is the "nutrient" for him to incubate these Internet companies.

  By conducting targeted venture capital investments through this incubation process, Digital Future will be able to obtain sufficiently generous returns.