Chapter 298 Ziff Davis's Bid and Midnight Flow
After Li Xiaofan hesitated for a while at the door of Guo Hanyue's boudoir, he went up to his room on the third floor. He was worried that if Liu Mengchen slept in Guo Hanyue's room, it would be embarrassing for him to rush in.
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After getting up early the next morning, Li Xiaofan went to Tanah Merah Country Club to play half a round of golf, and then returned to the Singapore Science Park office at 10:30 in the morning.
Return to the office and listen to the work reports of each line and the progress report of the preparations for the "Pacific Online Bookstore".
Among them, financial director Zhou Xiaoqing reported that last time they went to Johor Bahru, Malaysia to connect with Hong Leong Bank Malaysia. After Malaysia Hong Leong Financial Group learned about this project, a VP vice president in charge of investment business wanted to come from Kuala Lumpur to visit Li Xiaofan in a few days. It is said that Hong Leong Financial Group of Malaysia is very interested in the "Pacific Online Bookstore" project and would like to learn more about it. Li Xiaofan told Zhou Xiaoqing that he welcomes the VP vice president of Hong Leong Financial Group of Malaysia to come and connect with him. If there is a partner like Hong Leong Financial Group of Malaysia in Malaysia, it will be even more powerful and get twice the result with half the effort!
After listening to various reports, Li Xiaofan finally had time to turn on the computer and surf the Internet.
There are several unread emails in the mailbox, one of which was sent by Jerry Yang to him and Sequoia Capital Moritz last night.
Jerry Yang's email stated that in addition to several well-known investment companies on Wall Street in the United States such as DFJ Investments, IDG and Carlyle Group, there is also a company called Ziff Davis (ZD for short). American publishing giants came to connect with their Yahoo company. It is said that Eric Sibo, director and CEO of Ziff Davis Company, likes Yahoo very much and is a super fan of Yahoo search engine.
Yang Zhiyuan introduced in the email that Ziff Davis Company is a leader in the global information high-tech publishing field. It owns the professional journals "PCMagazine" and "Personal Computer Magazine" with the largest subscription volume among global IT industry practitioners in the 1990s. PCWorld. Their company is the leader in the global segmented advertising market with a share of 25%, followed by International Data Group IDG with a market share of 12%. The two of them left the third-ranked CMP Media Company far behind, with only 3% market share.
In 1994, according to statistics from the authoritative American magazine "Advertising Age", Ziff Davis's "PC Magazine" became the world's largest IT media and ranked among the top ten periodicals in the United States. Its operating income has surpassed reputable magazines such as Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, and National Geographic, becoming the undisputed "No. 1 IT media brand in the world."
Jerry Yang introduced in the email that Ziff Davis Company’s asking price is the same as SoftBank Group, with a valuation of US$150 million, and plans to invest US$30 million to account for 20% of the shares.
Several other investment companies such as DFJ Investments, IDG and Carlyle Group have just completed DD due diligence and have not yet come up with investment plans and quotations.
Li Xiaofan smiled when he saw the familiar ZiffDavis company. In his previous life, at the beginning of next year, the publishing department of this company was acquired by SoftBank Group at a staggering price of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars. It was like a snake swallowing an elephant. Big drama. If nothing else goes wrong, the two of them have reached an internal acquisition agreement at this stage, and the one hiding behind ZiffDavis is probably the SoftBank Group. If SoftBank Group completes the huge US$1.8 billion acquisition of Ziff Davis's publishing department by the end of this year, SoftBank Group will be heavily in debt. SoftBank now wants to take a gamble on outstanding Internet companies such as Yahoo that have not yet been listed to solve the huge debt problem. debt crisis.
Li Xiaofan’s reply to Yang Zhiyuan’s email has the same meaning as Sequoia Capital Moritz. It is better to wait for the quotations from other investment companies such as DFJ Investments, IDG and Carlyle Group to come out, and then convene a shareholders’ meeting to discuss Finally, a new strategic investor capital increase plan was introduced.
In the afternoon, Li Xiaofan was invited to visit Counselor Qi at the Economic and Commercial Counselor's Office of the Chinese Embassy in Singapore near Orchard Road.
Counselor Qi used to serve as the deputy director-level leader in charge of foreign trade in the Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation in a province in the mainland. He looked very elegant. After meeting Li Xiaofan in the conference room, he smiled and said: "Mr. Li, we recently read from the local media in Singapore I have read several reports about your successful business, and this time I finally met you in person. You are indeed a talented person. First of all, I would like to express my congratulations! ”
"Thank you, Counselor Qi, you are very grateful!"
After the greetings, Counselor Qi got straight to the point: "Mr. Li, Xiao Ren's internal reference article in the last Xinhua News Agency article was very well written and was approved by the leaders of our Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. Therefore, we would like to contact you to see if you have any The idea of returning to China to invest in a Yahoo Singapore station project..."
After listening to Counselor Qi's introduction, Li Xiaofan replied: "First of all, I would like to thank the leaders of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and Counselor Qi for their relationship with our project. From my heart, I really want to go back to China to invest in and create a similar project. However, according to My current understanding is that in China, it is currently possible to connect The number of people opening accounts to connect to the Internet is less than 100,000. At present, the country may not have the soil to develop an Internet project similar to Yahoo. Moreover, there are so many small and medium-sized enterprises in our country, and I am embarrassed to propose such high-level support as the Singapore government does. Amount of subsidy policy..."
In his previous life, Li Xiaofan did some case studies when he was studying for an EMBA. The number of Internet users in China was only 620,000 in 1997. After 1997, it began to grow explosively, more than eight times to 5.1 million in 1998, 8.9 million in 1999, and broke through 10 million to 22.5 million in 2000. In 2005, it broke through the 100 million mark...
The number of Internet users in the United States has now exceeded 25 million. This number of Internet users in the United States will not be surpassed by China until 2001, six years later!
Therefore, from the perspective of the number of Internet users, Li Xiaofan believes that the best time to make a layout is in 1997, waiting for the explosion in 1998.
In contrast, the establishment time of the domestic Internet giants in the past was almost concentrated around 1998:
NetEase was established in June 1997, Sohu was established in February 1998, Tencent was established in November 1998, Sina was established in December 1998, Alibaba was established in September 1999, and Baidu was established in January 2000...
Counselor Qi was very reasonable and said to Li Xiaofan gently: "Mr. Li, I completely understand what you mean. In this way, I will let Xiao Zhao from our Commercial Counselor's Office take charge. When I have time, I will come to you to learn more and report back to the department after further research. Do you think this is okay?"
"No problem, Counselor Qi, you and Secretary Zhao are always welcome to come to our company to guide our work!"
...
After leaving the embassy, Li Xiaofan asked A Long to take him to visit several customers, and in the evening he made an appointment with Lin Qianxue of Ximu Electronics and several old friends to have dinner together on the East Coast.
When he returned to the townhouse dormitory, it was already a little after ten o'clock in the evening.
When he went up to the second floor and passed by the two girls' rooms, he heard the sound of water splashing coming from their room. Perhaps Guo Hanyue and Liu Mengchen had just come back and were taking a shower in there.