Chapter 415 GII Fund Phase II

In late August, Uniqlo's parent company, Fast Retailing, also completed the acquisition of the Primark clothing chain.

At this time, the market value of Fast Retailing Group has reached about US$4 billion, which is a significant increase compared to the market value of less than US$3 billion when Global Industrial Investment Fund acquired them.

The deal values ​​the Primark clothing chain, which has more than 300 stores, at $2.5 billion (about £1.43 billion).

Therefore, after acquiring the Primark clothing chain through a share issuance, Primark became one of the sub-brands of Fast Retailing Group.

In this way, the shareholding ratio of Fast Retailing Group has become that Global Industrial Investment Fund holds 40% of its shares; Argos Retail Group holds 38.46% of its shares; and the shareholding of the Yanai Zheng family has been reduced to less than 15%...

Through this acquisition of the Primark clothing chain, Fast Retailing has also entered the European market. Later, they will use Primark's sales data to promote Uniqlo's store opening plan in Europe.

However, the focus of Uniqlo's future development is still the Chinese market. In Baron's previous life, the Chinese market was the second largest market for Uniqlo after the Japanese market in terms of the number of branches, and contributed the most profits. This also shows the importance of this market to Uniqlo.

At the same time, Primark will also begin to expand in the Asian market, especially in Japan and China, through the channels of Fast Retailing Group.

Another benefit of this merger and acquisition for Fast Retailing Group is that after merging the manufacturing departments of both parties, there will be economies of scale. The cost control of the entire Fast Retailing Group will be better than before, making them more competitive.

After that, Fast Retailing Group also established a partnership with Argos Retail Group. Their brands, including Uniqlo and Primark, will be launched on Argos Retail Group's online mall Argos.com, and a transit warehouse radiating throughout Europe will be built in France to distribute goods for sales on Argos.com and their various branches.

As Argos Retail Group has focused its main efforts on e-commerce, they have also begun investing in building a network covering Europe. They enter each country starting with a transit warehouse and pickup network. Together with their partnership with EF Logistics, they are now able to cover the most essential parts of Western Europe.

The share of sales through their Argos.com website has also increased from less than 10% at the beginning to more than 25% at present. It can be said that this has made a huge contribution to the growth of Argos Retail Group's turnover.

…

"The current returns from shorting in the foreign exchange market are only good, but not yet what we would like. However, in terms of crude oil futures, the returns are relatively more satisfactory."

While saying this to Barron, Daisy also brought up the exchange rate of the euro against the US dollar and the trend of international crude oil prices.

As for international crude oil, the price had reached the $60 level in early August. By the end of August, it had continued to rise and was about to reach the $70 level.

It can be said that this month, the price of international crude oil has been growing steadily, and DS Investment Company, which is long on crude oil futures, has made huge profits as a result.

"The other is the Mars Fund. According to our calculations, we can get more than $1 billion in revenue from this profit sharing."

Speaking of this, Daisy couldn't help but smile. It was no wonder, such a high return also meant that her bonus would not be too low.

September is almost here, which means that the investment window for Mars Fund will open again.

Last year, the Mars Fund received more than $600 million in profit sharing, and this year, that figure has increased to more than $1 billion.

Of course, this also means that the Mars Fund has brought even richer returns to its users. Currently, the total size of the fund has exceeded US$7 billion. It is estimated that soon, after this investment window ends, it will exceed US$10 billion.

This time, Barron plans to invest his share of the profits from the Mars Fund into the Global Industrial Investment Fund.

To be precise, it is the second phase of the GII Fund.

The previous GII Phase I fund received a total of US$6 billion for investment, including US$1.8 billion of DS Capital's own funds.

Almost all of these funds have been invested in projects such as Fast Retailing, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and the acquisition of the London Stock Exchange.

However, Baron also found that in terms of attracting funds, the GII Fund was relatively inferior to the later Caesar Fund, mainly due to the participation of funds from the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Kuwait Investment Authority. The main reason was that the GII Fund was not a fixed-income product like the Caesar Fund, but was more like the Mars Fund, in which DS Capital collected a share of investment income.

Combined with the projects that GII Fund invested in before, the asset appreciation during this year is not as obvious as that of Caesar Fund - mainly because the performance of United Energy Group invested by Caesar Fund is too outstanding, while GII Fund lacks such a "star project".

Although Baron knew that the final return of the GII Fund would definitely be higher than that of the Caesar Fund, it would take a longer time to manifest itself. Often in investment, people always subconsciously focus on short-term results.

Although neither the Saudi Public Investment Fund nor the Kuwait Investment Authority has said anything about the investment in the GII Fund, it can be seen from the subsequent capital investment that, at present, the Caesar Fund is more popular among investors.

Therefore, Barron decided to end the first phase of the GII fund and not to continue seeking investment in the short term, but to establish a new second phase fund of GII.

The GII Phase II Fund imitates the Caesar Fund and mainly provides customers with 3-5 year fixed income products. The profit share of the Mars Fund will be mainly used as DS Capital's own funds and invested in the GII Phase II Fund.

However, Barron is now fully confident in obtaining investment at a lower rate of return. Therefore, in the future, whether it is the Caesar Fund or the GII Phase II Fund, the yield of their fixed-income investment products will not be as high as before, and will be set at an annualized fixed income of 8%-10%.

Even with this rate of return, it is very attractive among relatively formal and large-scale investment products - of course, it cannot be compared with the "Ponzi scheme" like the Madoff Fund.

But if one really wants to pursue high returns and invests in Madoff, Barron can only laugh.

But to be honest, Madoff would not absorb just any funds. After all, he was an experienced financial professional. There is a reason why the Madoff Fund could last so long if it had not encountered the subprime mortgage crisis and might not have collapsed so early.

As we all know, the so-called Ponzi scheme is to use the principal of later comers to pay the interest of earlier investors...

Therefore, if this scam is to continue, it is very important to grasp the rhythm of fund absorption.

It doesn't mean that the more money you "scam" at once, the better. Instead, the amount of funds that need to be absorbed, like an inverted pyramid, needs to increase at a certain rhythm so that the increased amount of funds can maintain the interest payment of the former, and avoid a collapse due to the increase being insufficient to maintain this high-interest game.

Madoff did a great job in this regard. He had been controlling the amount of funds he absorbed, and even made people outside think that only people with certain qualifications could enter the Madoff Fund. They all regarded being "cheated" by Madoff as a symbol of their status...

Therefore, in this regard, the amount of funds absorbed by the Madoff Fund is still very measured. Most people, even if they know that there is such a high-income fund, find it difficult to squeeze in.

This can prevent other investment funds from being affected in terms of rate of return.