Chapter 183: Hermes family

After completing the cooperation with SoftBank in Japan, after a little tenderness with Nozomi Sasaki, he went directly to France.

When William Chen came to Japan for the first time, he obtained a local special item-【Language Amplification Wind Chime】.

After William Chen used this tool at the time, he chose to learn Japanese, and because of this, he met Nozomi Sasaki, who was his Japanese teacher at the time.

After that time, this item entered the state of energy exhaustion and charging. Finally, not long ago, it showed that the energy bar was full again, which meant that it could be used again and learn a new language.

At first, William Chen didn't decide which language he would use this prop to learn this time. However, after deciding that he wanted to acquire the shares of Hermès, he also used [Language Amplification Wind Chimes] again to learn French.

Therefore, when he first arrived in France, he met an employee of Goldman Sachs here, and he entrusted the other party to help him find a suitable French teacher.

Er, in order to prevent the other party from misunderstanding his meaning like the manager of the Hilton Hotel in Japan last time, or making his own opinion, so he made a special statement that he was just learning French and had no other intentions.

Since Fan Bingbing needs to complete some work before coming to France, this time William Chen arrived here first, and she will come to France in a few days to join him.

William Chen first learned about Goldman Sachs' acquisition of Hermes shares.

"At present, the shares of Hermes International that we have acquired in the secondary market are about 22.3 million shares, accounting for nearly 20% of the total share capital of Hermes International. The average price is about 65 euros, and about 1.45 billion euros have been used, which is equivalent to about 1.95 billion US dollars. more than US dollars."

"Through our continuous acquisitions in the secondary market during this period, the stock price of Hermes International has risen from 56.5 euros to above 77 euros, a cumulative increase of more than 36%. Now in the French stock market, because of Hermes International's reverse The trend has risen, and a lot of money has taken notice of this stock and there has been a lot of follow-up action.”

"And the current stock holders, seeing the price of this stock rising, already have the psychology of reluctance to sell. If they continue to acquire, it will be difficult to get too much chips, but it will greatly push up the stock price. Therefore, we have suspended the absorption in the secondary market.”

Chen William heard the explanation of the person in charge of Goldman Sachs, and also knew the current situation of Hermes International stock in the secondary market. At present, he has held nearly 20% of the shares of Hermes International.

However, because Goldman Sachs used means to hold these stocks through multiple institutional accounts, it avoided the French stock market’s requirement to purchase more than 5% of the shares of listed companies and to show the purpose of the acquisition.

So he went on to ask:

"What about the acquisition of shares held by members of the Hermès family?"

"We first surveyed the financial situation of seventy-two adult holding members of the Hermès family, and then, in the first stage, selected the members with the most difficult financial situation - most of whom were affected by Due to the impact of this subprime mortgage crisis, there is a large loss in related investments, and the number of these people is around 20."

“The results this time are quite gratifying. We have reached an acquisition agreement with 15 of them. The average acquisition price is around 70 euros. The number of shares involved is about 13.386 million shares, accounting for about 12% of the total share capital. The other 5 People are also continuing to negotiate prices, and it looks more promising at the moment.”

"The next phase of our plan is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the remaining 52 members of the Hermès family, make judgments based on their current investment direction and their contacts with Hermès, and select the most likely ones. Contact with people who are interested in selling shares."

At present, Goldman Sachs has bought it for itself, and Hermes has up to 32% of the shares, and has used more than 3.2 billion US dollars.

He is quite satisfied with the work of Goldman Sachs, William Chen continued:

"Just make the acquisition according to your ideas. I support your work, but now the Hermes family has noticed my acquisition, right?"

Gu Ling

"Yes, Mr. William, this is not difficult to detect. After all, when we start to approach members of the Hermès family and acquire their shares, there will inevitably be news leaked to other family members. And from the current Hermès International stock The price changes of the company can also detect someone's behavior of absorbing shares in the secondary market."

This is indeed the case. In the case of Hermès, it is impossible to secretly acquire it. After all, the shareholding ratio of their family members exceeds 70%. It is definitely not enough to acquire less than 30% of the outstanding shares in the primary market, and they also need to acquire a part of the shares in the hands of their family members.

But once this is done, the news must not be kept secret, it will always be revealed to other family members, and finally the family members who currently control the Hermès company will know the situation.

Therefore, in William Chen's plan from the very beginning, there was no intention to complete the acquisition of Hermes once and for all through a blitzkrieg.

After he holds a certain proportion of the shares of Hermès, he needs to face the Hermès family and communicate with them to determine the next step.

The current CEO of Hermès is Patrick Thomas, the only CEO outside the Hermès family.

However, although he was in charge of the Hermès company at this time, the Hermès family had not lost control of the company.

Although Hermès is a public company, it has a family culture as unbreakable as a castle.

Specifically, Hermès has an 11-member family executive committee responsible for selecting a new CEO, president and other key positions from among the next generation of family members.

In order to pursue the principle of democratic centralism, there are usually 4-5 non-family members on the executive committee to maintain fairness and justice.

However, according to the former incumbent, if there are 3-5 people discussing a matter, as long as the family members say "yes", no one dares to object. Executives who are not members of the family rarely make strategic or brand decisions without the involvement of a single Hermès descendant.

Therefore, Patrick Thomas is obviously an excessive choice when the last CEO of the Hermès family, Jean-Louis Dumas, is very old and the family has not yet selected a suitable next successor.

But one of the interesting things about the Hermès family is that there are no members of the family whose surname is Hermès.

The Hermès Group was established in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a manufacturer of special carriage accessories for European aristocrats. In 1867, at the Paris World Exposition, Hermes won the first-class honorary award for its exquisite craftsmanship, and has since become famous.

But when the company developed into the hands of the third-generation successor Emile Maurice Hermès Since he had no son and only four daughters, in the 1930s, Emile Maurice Hermes Rhys Hermès passed the Hermès company to his son-in-law, Robert Dumas.

Also from this time on, members of the Hermès family no longer have the surname of Hermès. At the same time, the Hermès family began to have members of three branches - Dumas, Pièche and Grande, descended from the daughters of Emile Maurice Hermes.

And from then on, the family members of the Hermès family who served as heirs began to have the surname Dumas.

Therefore, what William Chen needs to meet now is Patrick Thomas, the CEO of Hermès, and representatives of members of the Hermès family.

However, William Chen is not in a hurry. He has just arrived in France. If he rushes to see the Hermes family immediately, it will appear that he cares too much about it.

Negotiation is often a psychological battle, so William Chen believes that we must first understand the other party more before we can make the correct strategy.

Before that, William Chen first met the French teacher that Goldman Sachs had found for him, but after seeing the other party, William Chen had some doubts, was there anything wrong with his order at the time?
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